


The Wounds On Your Hands

by Experimental



Series: Forbidden Colors [1]
Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Backstory, Canon - Manga, Catholic Character, Demonic Possession, Explicit Sexual Content, Guilt, Literary Allusions, Multi, Obsession, Occult, Religious Themes & References, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-11
Updated: 2005-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:38:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 63,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experimental/pseuds/Experimental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Izuru knew after that first day of class that he wanted nothing more that term than to make that man love him. Backstory to the Saint Michel arc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
The ephemerality of worldly things is like springtime blossoms scattering  
in the breeze; the brevity of human existence is like an autumn moon disappearing  
behind a cloud.   


  
—Tale of the Heike, the Initiates' Chapter   


  


* * *

  
The wounds on your hands never seem to heal  
I thought all I needed was to believe   


  


* * *

It was Mitani’s first year teaching at the Saint Michel Preparatory High School for Boys.

He called it a dream job. Having received his degree in Christian history and art, the school had long held special appeal for him. It was built to be a replica of the Mont-Saint-Michel abbey off the Normandy coast, almost completely surrounded by water except for one long two-lane floating bridge leading in and out, and rather secluded from the rest of the Nagasaki area. In addition, the school's chapel also featured reproductions of famous stained glass windows, those scriptures of the once illiterate masses, most notably the “Notification of Conception” from Saint-Etienne Cathedral in Bourges and Augsburg’s eleventh-century “The Prophet.” It was, in short, a melting pot of Christian achievement, just as the original location must have seemed an amalgamation of different faiths, piled one atop the other, the weight of them welding them together like sedimentary rock.

The rock on which the original abbey was built had once been called Mont Tombe when it was used by Druids as a graveyard. In Roman times, it became a place of worship for the secretive cult of Mithras, the Unconquered Sun, whose followers showed their devotion by branding themselves, before the spread of Christianity. It was not until the year 708 that St Aubert began construction of the abbey, after the Archangel Michael appeared to him in a series of dreams. He had doubted the authenticity of the dream the first night, and still the second, until on the third St Michael tapped him on the head with his finger. (Some of the students chuckled politely as Mitani reached this part of the story.) Still it took centuries of construction and reconstruction before the abbey reached its present state, the state which served the basis for this school half a world away.

Similarly, Nagasaki had seen its phases—Shinto, Buddhism, Christianity—and had its share of highs and lows. Destruction by the A-bomb and rebirth. Defeat and hope. It was a unique cycle, and though they were only living in one moment of it, Mitani wished to impress upon them the pride they should have in the history of the area, because as students of Saint Michel academy it was their history as well, with all its extremes. As Japanese, as residents of Nagasaki, and as Christians they should appreciate the reoccurring themes of transformation and renewal that had shaped their lives.

Thus went Mitani’s introductory speech to his second year class, 2-A. He was by far the youngest teacher in the academy, in his twenties and recently out of university. He wore his hair in a short ponytail and a fringe hung down over his eyes. Standing at the front of the room in his pressed suit and plain tie he seemed small, like a boy trying his best to dress like adults around him. The writer Endo Shusaku had once described his faith like a suit of Western clothing, awkward and restrictive; and as Mitani related the same story in standard Japanese, one could not help but think his position was like an ill-fitting suit, in need of compromise with his youth.

But it was precisely his youth that attracted the students to him. He had a timid personality, easily overwhelmed, but once he was on a roll as he was now, his voice filled with a passion to which only the young themselves could truly relate.

He said little about himself. Boys used to sleeping through their older professors’ self-glorifying first days sat up and listened as he told instead gruesome and inspiring stories of the trials of Kyushu’s Christian martyrs in the seventeenth century, and the guilt—just as painful—of those who had chosen to give up their faith rather than see those precious to them suffer. He related their experiences to those early Christians who were tortured in the circuses and private gardens of the corrupt Roman emperors. Even St Peter, the father of their church, was no exception. He had already denied Christ three times and yet insisted of the emperor Nero that he be crucified upside down at Vaticanus, knowing he did not deserve to emulate Christ in full. And could his faith and atonement be shown more fittingly than in his death? Even the father of the church had stumbled along the way—even Christ himself had had his doubts, his weaknesses. But it was his sacrifice—everyone’s sacrifice—that made it possible for others to rebuild themselves and find meaning in their existence.

Mitani was speaking of history, and the senior instructors who sat in metal folding chairs along the side of the room making careful note of his speech heard a sermon intended to inspire morality in the students. What Okazaki Izuru heard, however, was something entirely different, and not at all as trite. He could hear it in the telling of St Peter’s martyrdom, and the guilt of Kichijiro. Though the intent may have been purely intellectual, Mitani’s words came from his heart, from his own personal faith and own personal failings that would otherwise have been irrelevant in the classroom.

At first, Izuru disliked him for it. He found it conceited of the new teacher that he would choose to speak of his own history in such a roundabout and presumptuous way, comparing himself to martyrs, rather than state his qualifications outright like everyone else. His humility bordered on hubris. But Izuru quickly realized it was in fact envy he felt.

Envy.

He could have laughed. He couldn’t see what of the new teacher was deserving of his envy. The man's personality seemed shallow and unstable, and he was only saying these things before his senior colleagues because he knew what they wanted to hear. Izuru’s classmates were so enthralled by his stories they forgot that they had all heard them before. It was true Mitani’s methodology was worthy of attention, but, as the class captain, so were Izuru’s after all.

It came to him slowly what set Mitani apart from the others: He was genuine.

He drew his speech to a close with a short, somewhat informal bow belying his age, and expressed the typical hopes that he and his students would get along and all enjoy the rest of the school year together.

Then, as the head of his class and therefore representative of its feelings, Izuru stood to say a word of welcome to their new teacher.

“A wise man once said,” he began, “'those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.'”

Stifled laughter echoed around the room, but the senior instructors’ faces clearly showed their disapproval. Paying them no heed, Izuru smiled. Mitani's cheeks colored, but he seemed to understand something in Izuru’s manner and smiled as well. “Please regard us favorably, Sensei. We look forward to spending the year with you,” Izuru said, and bowed. Solemnly and as one, the class echoed his wish. Hands rose quickly with questions.

Outside, the blue sky and bright reds and golds of the trees, that last nostalgic burst of color before winter, signaled the start of the latter term.

* * *

“Ahh . . . yeah. . . . Right there. . . .”

Fujisawa moaned quietly as Izuru moved deeper inside him. The springs in the mattress groaned beneath them, underscoring their pleasure as they found a rhythm. Fujisawa’s breathing was hard and carnal in Izuru’s ear as he rocked back and forth above him, exciting him as though in that wordless hush were all the filthy suggestions Izuru saw trapped behind Fujisawa’s eyes.

“Oh, God—” Izuru gasped, meaning nothing religious by it, unless the sensations driving their bodies could be described as a religious experience. It would at least make an interesting confession for the strict priest they joked got his jollies listening to stories like theirs. _Then I took the Lord’s name in vain four—no, five times while I was doing my classmate. . . . What’s that, Father? You don’t think you know quite what I mean by ‘doing’?_

Fujisawa sat up erect on his classmate’s hips, gasping at the better angle the new position provided. He touched himself and nipped his own fingertips and breathed unintelligible words of encouragement while Izuru thrust up into him, as though he were making love to himself. The picture he presented made Izuru come with a cry; Fujisawa’s satisfied groan echoed in his ears soon after.

Afterwards they sat naked on Izuru’s bed—his roommate was on paid leave for the evening—sharing a smoke from half a pack Fujisawa had received from a third-year as trade for a blow job. As they passed the cigarette between them, Fujisawa said in jest, “Here’s to the new term.”

“Hear, hear,” said Izuru. He took a puff and blew the smoke in Fujisawa’s direction.

He was a handsome and charismatic young man, Okazaki Izuru: athletic, neat, and at the top of his class. His hair he wore parted slightly on the left. He had a heart-shaped face and serious mouth, and wide, piercing eyes framed by dark lashes that sometimes made him look a rather meek seventeen, but the other students knew not to be fooled by appearances. There was a confident air about him that put him above the rest of the crowd, and this ironically attracted the esteem of most of the class, who saw him as a sort of big brother to whom they could turn with their troubles, should they actually have need to disturb him. Though usually reserved, he was recognized as a natural leader, perfect for the position of student body president when he went into his third year. That did not mean he was the most straight-laced student in the school, but when, on the very rare occasion, he was caught doing anything of questionable morals, the academy dismissed it with good faith in his person—and, no doubt, in his parents’ pocketbooks as well. He had only one rival in the whole place, and that was his classmate Fujisawa.

No less of an academic, Fujisawa’s poise gave him the appearance of a revolutionary, a bohemian, with his hands in his pockets, a cocky tilt to the head, and his dark auburn hair in a fashionable, jagged cut—which presently stuck stubbornly to the sweat on the side of his face. His eyes were sharp, his brows dark and severe, and his mouth seemed permanently fixed in a clever sneer, yet his looks retained an alluring androgyny that no one could say he did not take full advantage of. But if he was not an outright rebel in act—his style merely came close to breaking school regulations, and his illicit ideas of fun were kept to the confines of the dorms and washrooms—he was at least in his philosophy, which was always pushing the envelope, shocking his classmates with his wild and logical conclusions. And yet, with his otherwise impeccable public manners, no one could ultimately say that he wasn’t really an angel.

That is, more to the point, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Izuru would have said he was a slut and a sadist. He would have been partly correct. His ambition and Fujisawa’s were, after all, and always had been two sides of the same coin. Theirs was a philosophy of take or be left with nothing. Neither could deny it was little more than this shared narcissistic leaning that had brought them, with all their mutual distrust, together in the first place.

“ _Naa_ , Okazaki. . . .” The sly look had returned to Fujisawa’s face, but he asked innocently, “What did you think of the new teacher?”

“Mm? Which one?” Izuru feigned ignorance.

“You know which one. The Christian history replacement. Mitani.”

“Oh.” Izuru rolled onto his stomach. He made nothing of the gesture, but in fact he suddenly felt vulnerable speaking of the man as exposed as he was. “He seems all right, I guess. Not too interesting. At least he sounds easy, but who knows with those types. You know, talking about how we should motivate ourselves—‘as Japanese, as Christians!’”

“Heh. Yeah. You don’t suppose Father Robert put him up to that godawful speech, do you?”

“I’m just relieved he didn’t start in on ‘the full moon in autumn’ or something.”

“‘O bright, bright, bright, bright and bright, bright moon!’” Fujisawa said laughing. But on second thought, “I don’t know. Any teacher who can romanticize torture like that can’t be all that bad.”

“Come on. He’s a square.”

“Tch.” Suddenly serious, Fujisawa turned away to nurse the cigarette by himself.

But Izuru hadn’t meant what he said. He wasn’t even sure why he had said it.

* * *

Mitani arrived at class the next day just as the second bell was ringing. His loose-leaf notes were wedged between the pages of his textbook, ready to fall out at a careless tilt, and though he tried to make nothing of it he was short of breath. Yet, though he must have been in a hurry, at the same time it could be said that he seemed somewhat more solidly in his element compared to the day before. One able to make the comparison might have wondered which was his truer nature, because in this light he seemed even more like a university graduate student than a professor of any sort.

Dropping the book on the lectern and running a hand through his hair, he said without preamble: “I know history can be a boring subject to study, any way it’s presented. I find that somewhat backwards myself, because when you think about the events and philosophies that have shaped the world into what it is today, how much they meant to the people living through them, you'd find history isn't boring at all but incredibly dynamic and wonderful and . . .” A sigh. “Frustrating. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to convey them as well as that, but I will try to make this class as interesting as I can, if you all will just bear with me. . . .”

The whole tone of this disclaimer was so different from his introductory speech that Izuru could not help his fascination at seeing another side to Mitani's person. Against this stubborn will, he could feel his esteem for the young teacher slowly begin to grow within himself.

“I was told your last professor brought you up to the twelfth century before he left,” Mitani began as he sorted through his material. “I guess we’ll start off with some review of last term. Anyone care to remind us where we left off?”

Shyly at first, the students volunteered what they remembered, vague as that often was. It was the first official day of class, after all, and even if they daydreamed or drew in their notebook margins in lecture tomorrow, it was the benefit of the doubt they gave their new instructor on that first day. Mitani wrote what they supplied him on the blackboards and added dryly-delivered anecdotes in an attempt to lighten the mood. The rise of the Holy Roman Empire in Europe, the crusades to take back the Holy Land, the riches gained by Rome and Venice and the great works of the monasteries, the Great Schism with the Eastern church and mounting fear of Doomsday. Though usually an active participant in class discussions, Izuru held back from this one and was content to observe. If he were honest, however, he might have said it wasn’t just the material he was taking in. He was quite familiar with that already.

The class time went by too quickly, but before it was over, Mitani handed out their reading assignment for the rest of the calendar year, what he said was one of his favorite novels: _The Name of the Rose_ by Umberto Eco. It was a thick, intimidating book riddled with untranslated Latin, and many of the students groaned when they got it. Their displeasure was even more obvious when they learned it was a piece of historical fiction based entirely around a monastery in northern Italy. In his well-meaning way, Mitani tried to encourage them by saying it was in fact a detective story; and Fujisawa’s grin widened knowingly, the same look coming over his features as when he suggested something utterly lewd. His reaction, and Mitani’s more innocent enthusiasm for the book, lent it a strange weight in Izuru’s hands that must have been akin to the feeling the illusive tome in the novel sent through the bodies of the novices who longed for it.

He was the last to leave the room when the bell rang for lunch, and Mitani said to him, rather matter-of-factly, as he moved past the lectern to the exit, “Excuse me, um . . . Okazaki is it?”

The gentleness and uncertainty with which he said that—as though he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know, or was trying overly hard to sound uninterested—took Izuru by surprise, so that he only managed an awkward, affirmative, “Mm.”

“I hear you’re the captain of this class.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s good to know. . . .” There was a tense moment in which Izuru was unsure whether he should excuse himself or ask what his teacher wanted. With his hair in his eyes, it was difficult to tell even where Mitani's attention really lay. He said, “What you said yesterday—”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Izuru said, suddenly and inexplicably self-conscious. It wasn’t like him to be apologetic.

But Mitani smiled. “Actually, I thought it was very appropriate.”

Izuru didn’t know what to say. Though it seemed in that brief moment as though Mitani had reached out to him, even only a little bit, he couldn’t be sure that the meaning he gleaned from his professor’s words was not in fact arisen from within himself. The truth was, it had affected Izuru somehow, to find himself alone with Mitani and hear that man speak his name in that same gentle but hesitant tone he used to speak the names of kings and popes and heretics. Perhaps it was the normal amount of awe for a particularly genuine mind that often possesses a student that possessed Izuru then.

Surely, he thought, it would fade with Mitani’s novelty.

* * *

But it only seemed to grow.

It was hardly two weeks into the latter term that he was struck by a new realization about Mitani. The deciduous trees around campus had a mangy look and were dropping their leaves at a heartbreaking rate, but they were glorious and even managed to promise spring’s renewal in their deaths, like the burnt relics of martyrs that fascinated the new teacher.

It was a strange affinity that Izuru realized, a curiosity he could not quite describe. Like an affliction, it had seemed it wasn’t there one day, but the next it was constantly resurfacing in his mind, nagging at him, so that he wondered how he had ever been without it. He wondered how—in that first long week and a half—he had never noticed Mitani in the same way he did now. It was as if he were seeing the real Mitani for the first time—as though there were two Mitanis: one, the dodgy newcomer who had blushed when the students asked him personal questions, and raked a nervous hand through his overgrown hair—who had appeared hardly older than they were and kept his distance with a well-pressed suit and polite language; the other, confident in his knowledge and passionate for the subject, keen with the students, and sincere even in his humorless jokes, singing the psalms in mass with the ritual solemnity they seemed naturally to deserve. These two personalities, though one might think them rather exclusive, melded so humanly together—a seamless combination of optimism and fallibility, kindness and distance—that they made, in Izuru’s eyes, his professor’s character seem more admirable than his own.

He knew after that first day of class, though perhaps it took him longer to understand it, that he wanted nothing more that term than to make that man proud of him.

The thought did cross Izuru’s mind that it was merely his personal attraction that made Mitani stand out in such a manner. While the other boys admired Mitani and seemed to look forward to his class more than any other, they could not have seen in him quite the same qualities that Izuru did. However, in the fierce strength of his conviction, he decided it was they who lacked insight, not that Mitani was in fact not as saintly as Izuru perceived him to be.

* * *

It was three days into the latter term when Father Robert went to the chapel to prepare for that morning’s service, and was startled to see someone already there. The young man’s back was turned to him as he stared at the stained glass windows along the side of the nave, so the priest did not recognize him at first, only noted that the stranger sported a short ponytail that was not permitted of the students. Visitors would often come from Nagasaki on the weekends for a tour or to hear the Sunday service, and he thought this man might be one of them until he remembered being notified of a new professor who would be arriving to take over the Christian history class. Of course, even the curve of the man’s back exuded that contemplative nature he had seen in those in training to be priests. It was an idealistic nature indicative of youth. He had lost it long ago himself.

He willed his heart to slow itself, something that seemed to take longer these days, but the young man had given him quite a start. He coughed softly to alert the other to his presence.

Mitani spun around. His face lit up in embarrassment as he began to apologize. “It’s all right,” the priest interrupted him. “Please, keep doing whatever you were doing. Don't let me interrupt. We gave each other a bit of a fright, though, didn’t we?”

Mitani reddened. “I suppose so. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t see anyone when I came in. I was told the chapel here holds many reproductions of famous art pieces,” he said. “I was hoping to get a chance to see them when there was no one around. But if you’d rather I came back later—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The church's doors are always open to the faithful. Anyway, I could use the company. You’re the new Christian history teacher, correct? The one who’s replacing Professor Segawa?”

“That’s right, Father. Please, call me Mitani.”

“Well then, Professor Mitani,” said the priest as he shook the young man's hand, “I'm Father Robert, but you must have been told that by now. You have an interest in art?”

“Yes. Very much so.” The young man finally relaxed at that question. “I wrote my thesis on the Carolingian Renaissance. It’s amazing, what they were able to accomplish in those times, when we imagine how innocent men were when it came to the sciences. But back then it wasn’t about what you could build but how well you could inspire. Just the word, Christendom, held so much power. . . .” He glanced up at the windows for another moment, drawn to the brilliant colors in the first morning light. “Robert is a French name, isn’t it?” And Mitani said in French, “You have hardly any accent. How long have you lived in Japan, Father?”

“All my life. My parents moved here before the war. Your pronunciation is very natural,” the priest humored him; then, switching back to Japanese, said, “Do I really have that much of an accent?”

“No—not really.” Still a bit flustered from the compliment, Mitani said, “To tell the truth, it was a lucky guess. I don’t know the language that well.”

“Modesty. You’ve never been to France?”

“I’ve never had the time.”

“Now that you’re a full-time professor here, I doubt that will get any better.” Now that they had cleared the air between them, when Father Robert began to prepare for the morning service, Mitani followed him. “Still, you should go to Paris when you have a chance. If you like art, you will love it. I myself was fortunate to study theology there when I was your age—”

He grunted suddenly as he lifted a heavy stack of missals. Mitani quickly stepped in to take the books from him, and cast a worried look at the priest when he put a hand to his chest and breathed deep. “Are you all right, Father?”

“Fine, fine.” Father Robert waved away his concern. “Every once and a while this old heart of mine gives me trouble. Nothing to worry about.” They placed a few stack’s worth of books in the pockets in front of the pews, and then the priest sat with a sigh and gestured for Mitani to join him. Studying his person, Mitani had made him out to be more robust. He had a wide but lean frame under the black costume, that of someone who might once have been fairly muscular, and a stern face with the shaggy eyebrows of a philosopher. Mitani asked out of curiosity, in the innocent and forward way of someone born generations after, “Were you in Paris during the war?”

He could not tell if the priest’s chuckle was amused or offended. “Do I look that old to you?” he said. “I was still in primary school then. My family and I were interned near Kumamoto for the last few years of it. We were lucky, actually.”

Father Robert related all this to Mitani as calmly as though he were thoroughly removed from that experience, simply telling someone else’s story, and Mitani regretted asking such a question that was obviously sensitive now that he thought about it. _We were lucky. . . ._ He wasn’t from the Nagasaki area himself, but he could imagine the relief those who had escaped the bomb must have felt. And the guilt. In a situation like that, he thought, you would feel fortunate and—perhaps always wondering, Why me?—want to live this kind of life out of a sense of calling.

A life of service. That was the kind of life he had wanted to lead as a teacher.

Mitani could only nod. Suddenly he held so much respect for the man. He was glad he had come to this school, whose staff also had such an interesting history.

Father Robert did not seem to notice his sudden solemnness, and turning to Mitani, said, “In those days, boys knew the meaning of respect and obedience. They had a sense of higher duty. It was a matter of pride and personal worth, being an upright citizen. Times were hard and everyone had their responsibilities, but our characters were made stronger for it. I wonder sometimes if things aren’t too easy now, too complacent.”

It seemed odd to Mitani that the priest might actually be praising the war mentality he had grown up learning to criticize. Could someone who had been interned in his own country actually have those kinds of sentiments? “I don’t know. . . .” he said half-heartedly for lack of anything better.

“You have to keep a close eye on adolescent boys these days, Professor,” the priest said, wagging his index finger at the pew in front of them. “Especially here. You may not think it necessary. This is a Catholic school, therefore the students must be good Christian boys, right? Well, who am I to say. I don’t always like it, and I certainly don’t condone it, but you should be warned. You’ll find out sooner or later. This is an academy for rich folks to send their spoiled sons to. The severity of the family's faith is of less concern to the administrators than whether they can afford a generous donation on top of the tuition. Consequently there are things that go on, _behaviors_ , that the faculty finds it best to turn a blind eye to. Nobody wants to lose their position, you understand.”

Mitani smiled uncertainly. “You make it sound like the professors here are afraid of the students.”

“Not afraid so much as their hands are tied. However, that doesn’t excuse their moral cowardice. Normally I’d agree with the Ministry: At least they have the power and the good sense to instill the right values into our educational system. But ultimately it comes down to the teacher's responsibility. I believe you are in a unique position, Professor. I heard about your introductory speech, and now that I can put a face to the words, I’m sure you meant every word of it. Your youth makes you trustworthy, influential. You have to keep these boys in line or they will fall into disorder. I mean physical and spiritual disorder. It is our duty and our job as educators to instill morals in them, and fill the ethical void these times make in their souls in whatever way we can. It never ceases to amaze me how society keeps functioning decade after decade given the declining moral standards of Japan’s youth—”

Perhaps the priest noticed he was starting to preach. He said in a gentler tone, “Well, in any case, I do hope you take my advice.”

Mitani studied the old priest's profile, with its deep lines that alternated between making the man look kindly and stern. Sitting there beside him, it might have been the first time the question entered Mitani's mind: What am I supposed to make of this place? What am I truly supposed to be here?

Moreover, what had he really expected to accomplish by coming here? He was no longer sure how realistic it was to believe he could mold in the student body's collective mind an appreciation for history that matched his own, nor had he given much thought to the politics of the education system. Had he erred in his idealism?

Finding himself suddenly disoriented by his uncertainty, Mitani nonetheless told the priest, “I will take it to heart, Father.”

* * *

Morning mass was a solemn affair under the strict gaze of Father Robert. Some of the students would joke that he must have had eyes in the back of his head, not to mention superhuman hearing, because it seemed that nothing even in the farthest pews back escaped his detection, even when his face was turned toward the altar. It was the fear of having to do penance for disrupting the service that so effectively put religion into the boys—during the hour or so they spent in the chapel, at least. Father Robert took his authority very seriously, expounding the glory of God in the highest and the fire and brimstone that awaited the sinners with a zealousness that was easily mistaken for anger. No doubt it was partly anger guiding his oration, and disappointment in the behavior he saw as straying from God. Cursing and taking the Lord’s name in vain. Showing blatant disrespect for their elders. Being caught with contraband in the dorm rooms and filling the washrooms with the smell of cigarettes. And what was worse, fornication—their minds had turned off of God and onto sinful and trivial pleasures. In his passion for the Word, perhaps it was that he wanted to save their souls that Father Robert was often so harsh. Or perhaps he merely believed as so many of his generation did: that they were all little devils by nature, teenage boys, delinquents, and could not be trusted to use common sense, if they even had it. And because he was powerless to do anything about that matter in the classroom environment, he took it out on the boys in the only way he could: in sermon.

As they sang the hymns, the students’ voices echoed in the huge space, off the cold stone walls and high groin-vaulted ceiling. Behind the plain altar hung the crucifix supported by four angels, perhaps to represent the four gospels or the four corners of the world, or simply because three would have been too few and five too many. Their faces were all calm and forgiving as a buddha’s, like the statue of Mary and the Christ child that stood in the alcove. Even the face of Jesus on the cross showed no real human suffering: It was an emotional blank like the rest, if only a bit more depressing. The morning light that filtered through the tall stained glass windows threw the faces in relief, making them appear more magnificent than the gold-leafed pine wood that they were actually made of. In one window, the school’s patron, St Michael, prepared to do battle with a dragon representing Satan in the sky above a royal chapel, of which theirs was only a modern imitation.

The homily would start when the hymn ended, and with it Father Robert's rant du jour. Rather than sit through it, Izuru slipped out of the pew and crossed himself, confident he would not be missed by the staff whose gazes sat rapt upon the altar. Even if they did see him leave, they would not say a word. They did not share Father Robert’s convictions, having long ago given up that futile struggle; but the trust that accompanied being the captain of his class was convenient in that regard, too.

Izuru made his way down the hallway off the narthex to the toilet. The sounds of the students’ voices raised in praise faded behind the door, replaced by the demure tap of his shoes on the tiles, and the hush of ragged breathing issuing from one of the stalls. “Hey, Fujisawa,” Izuru said loudly, “I want to talk to you.”

Behind the closed door, someone was trying to mask his presence by holding his breath, but it only made his situation more obvious.

“Don’t stop, it’s just Okazaki,” Fujisawa murmured to his shy companion, refusing to miss a beat. Surely as Izuru could recognize him by his breathing, Fujisawa knew Izuru’s footsteps, if not his voice. He whispered something else, so low that it did not even echo in the small room, and chuckled. There came a shuffling of feet, then a short sigh. Then several, increasing in volume and frequency, from two separate throats, until neither cared any longer if they were overheard.

“Ah—!” Fujisawa cried out once; and Izuru knew as he studied his own face in the mirror, just as certainly as if he were on the other side of the stall door, how his classmate braced himself against the wall above the toilet as he shuddered, and pushed back against his companion. There was a moment of breathless silence following, then the unmistakable sound of zippers being zipped and the toilet flushing. A third-year emerged from the stall, refusing to meet Izuru’s eyes except for a quick glare as he briefly rinsed his hands and checked his reflection.

“Shame on you, skipping mass,” Izuru said when he had left. “You’ll go straight to Hell for that.”

His tone was laced with sarcasm, and Fujisawa laughed. He took his time emerging from the stall, satiated and tucking his shirttails back into this trousers. “You wanted to see me?”

“I just had a thought.”

“What, and you had to share it with me right away?”

Fujisawa’s sneer was wasted on Izuru, however, who ignored it.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” he said. “I don’t think we should wait until third year to lead the student council.”

A shade of skepticism touched Fujisawa’s features. “What brought this about?”

“Lust for power.” Izuru had meant it sarcastically, but his straight delivery made them both wonder if he wasn’t telling the truth. “Revenge, perhaps, if that works for you. Either way, I don’t see why we should wait, and have it handed to us on a silver platter. One more term won’t make any difference. We deserve it more than those third-years that are running things. Everyone knows it; we may as well prove it. Now.”

Fujisawa stared past him with a look of indecision.

“Just think,” Izuru said, “you could be lording it over Kaburagi instead of the other way around.”

Fujisawa couldn’t help a wide grin that spoke of things Izuru should not have known. “How is that any different from the way things are now?” he said meaningfully.

“It doesn’t have to stop at the student body.” Izuru folded his arms. Now that he had Fujisawa’s attention, he felt justified in taking his time. “I did some research. The student council’s charter, the official document from when it founded—no one’s read it in a long time. They don’t know that in it is the proof of what everyone considered just an old legend, that the terms of this charter give the student council leaders more authority than even the professors, and even this school's administrators have no choice but to turn a blind eye to their goings on.”

“Are you serious?” Fujisawa laughed. “Show me,” he said, and shoved his hands under Izuru’s jacket, searching for the document—or only pretending to—and backing him against the sink.

Izuru gasped. He was in no mood for playfulness at that moment, in that place. A serious shove made his classmate stop.

“I don’t have it with me,” Izuru told him. He lowered his voice to a murmur.

“But you will let me see it.”

“Of course.”

“Otherwise how will I know that you aren’t just playing me?”

Izuru turned away, and Fujisawa could not be certain if it wasn’t just his classmate’s response to his proximity. It was both arousing and intimidating, how he had trapped Izuru between the sink and his hips; and the thought of winning themselves that power seemed to produce in them both a very real, physical lust. So it was reluctantly that Fujisawa took a step back. “You said ‘we,’” he said, “but you didn’t tell me what was in it for you. Two-A class captain isn’t good enough for you now?”

“Why should I settle?” Izuru answered with a queer solemnity. “I could have the chance to mold Saint Michel into whatever I want it to be. And it looks good on a college application—”

“You mean, whatever _we_ want it to be,” Fujisawa corrected him.

Izuru smiled. “You’re in then?”

“I’d like to have a look at this mysterious charter first.”

“Meet me at the rocks after class and all shall be revealed. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I don’t want to miss communion.” His good mood returning, Izuru edged past Fujisawa, and the look that passed between them swore the latter to secrecy.

* * *

What the students referred to simply as the rocks was a piece of shoreline that faced the north where there was little beach to speak of, where large boulders jutted out into deep water to break the tide. It was not so much inaccessible as unsuspect, as it was secluded by the high wall that rose behind it and supported the island’s man-made infrastructure. It was not easy to spy on that strip of rocky beach from the dorms above, an advantage which lead directly to its popularity. The older students went there to smoke in the warmer months, during which time it tended to become a hot spot of initiation, but the adults either did not notice or pretended not to. Now that a cold wind was blowing off the water, the two found it abandoned except for the occasional crab or gull.

Izuru removed the charter from his satchel with the care one afforded an ancient document that might crumble in the slightest wind. In truth, it was not nearly so old; the leather portfolio was worn around the edges, but the only sign of age inside was the dated type-written print and faintly yellowed paper. He handed it to Fujisawa, who immediately skimmed its contents with the same amount of care.

“It was drafted in the late-'seventies, a couple years after the school was finished,” Izuru said. “As far as I know, no one’s really read it in over a decade, aside from the basics. They’ve been reprinted so many times, nobody thought there was any need to refer back to the original. If you ask me, I think the older professors probably wanted it to be forgotten.”

“If that’s the case, how did you get ahold of it?” Fujisawa said.

“I just did a little favor for one of the librarians. I never realized how stressful it was for a young woman to do part-time in an all-boys school.”

Fujisawa snorted at his mock-pity.

“Almost twenty years. . . . That seems like so long ago, but it really wasn’t.”

“Well, it was a lifetime ago.”

Even with this knowledge, there was a certain air of mystery about the whole matter. When one thought about it, high school turnover was so short, a mere three years, that it felt as though time had indeed been stretched out in Saint Michel’s enclosed world. In that way, it was difficult to fathom that any of their professors could be old enough to have seen the days of the student council’s beginning, even though it was barely twenty years thence.

“There are no rules in there against a second- or first-year being president,” Izuru said.

“We’ve always known that.”

“Yes, but we always thought that meant _running_. What first-year is going to win in a gentleman’s race against a senior?”

Fujisawa looked up from the page with an anticipatory smile.

“The charter details another way whereby an underclassman might become a leader,” Izuru explained from memory as he looked out over the bay. “It’s rather archaic but efficient. A student may challenge a member of the student council to a duel, and if he should win, the position of the man he bested becomes his. That way the student body can be certain it really does have the best man representing them. It’s simple Darwinian theory. What entails a duel isn’t exactly clear—I mean, it doesn’t say if it should be literally with swords or what—except that it should be one-on-one.”

Now he turned to Fujisawa with a gleam in his eye and said, “If we can defeat the president and vice-president, the council is ours. And between the two of us, I have no doubt we can do it.”

“And what do you suggest we do?”

Izuru bit his lip in thought, but he had already worked it out long ago. “One of us will have to take on Kaburagi. The other takes Kawada.”

“And how do you propose breaking this to them?” Fujisawa indicated the document. “Obviously we can’t just hand this over and hope it remains intact. This may be sacred stuff, but I can’t guarantee the third-years on the council will necessarily take it that way.”

“Then we’ll just have to beat them soundly enough to where they have no other choice.”

Fujisawa regarded him blankly for a moment, following some train of thought. Then he said, just as Izuru had predicted after his run-in with the current student council president that morning in the restroom during mass: “I’ll take Kaburagi, if it’s all the same to you. I want to see the look on his face when he gets his ass handed to him by a second-year. That’s the only way I can guarantee it.” He grinned. “You understand.”

* * *

What Fujisawa could not have known was that Izuru had another motive for revealing what he had, and it was inherently a selfish motive. Although it was true that Izuru's conscious intent was on molding Saint Michel to his own desires, that explanation was no more than a rational survival mechanism: His real plans were not so holistic as that.

From the start, he was well aware of the attention that Mitani paid the student council leaders. He watched from afar as his professor held intense discussions with them outside of class; and though the subjects of those discussions were unknown to him, the laughs or flashes of insight they occasionally shared were not.

It bothered Izuru. Someone as honest and genuine as his professor deserved better company than theirs. He deserved someone who had more than just a feigned interest in the subject he was so passionate about, someone who did not repeat names and dates just for the air of intelligence it lent him—someone who did not strive to build a relationship with Mitani simply in the belief it would earn him a better grade at the end of the term than the man he had replaced was willing to give. And it bothered Izuru that Mitani did not see through their self-serving deceit.

Or perhaps he did and his character simply would not allow him to show it. Strange how that only made Izuru feel worse for his teacher. It was not like him to empathize with a member of the staff, or pity them. Yet, if he were to be honest, he could not deny the vein of possessiveness that had influenced his own decisions as of late. The resentment he harbored toward the third-years and his plan to dethrone them was not completely separate from his inability, or unwillingness, to imagine Mitani teaching any class but 2-A. He was now convinced that since the first day of lectures when Mitani had spoken to him alone, they had shared a connection. The encouraging glances in class, the notes in the margins of his papers that made it seem Mitani could read his mind were only further evidence of this. The only problem was that Mitani had yet to realize it. Izuru had no doubt if he became president of the student council his professor would have no choice but to confront this truth. And how much more proud would he be if Izuru accomplished the leap on his own merits now, rather than having the position handed to him in his third year.

There was something about the idea of the duel that recalled a romanticized sense of honor and glory for Izuru, and nostalgia for the days of the samurai or the crusades of medieval Europe—when life and death moved at a faster pace, and immortality could be won with one noble deed. Indeed, the excitement that followed the intimate knowledge of one’s own mortality was inescapable, despite that Izuru had nothing so lethal in mind for this duel.

He would respect Fujisawa’s claim and focus his attentions on Kawada, the current vice-president of the student council. It was a better match. Kawada was an ignoramus; he had a habit of flaunting his knowledge and its shortcomings at the same time, as if he were purposefully degrading himself and then asking everyone to still take him seriously. Izuru in contrast was calculating, and never said anything that might make him look stupid. Kawada was a young man hungry for validation; his father was president of an automobile company. Izuru’s was a corporate attorney. Kawada was a star member of the track team; Izuru's parents had had him enroled in martial arts lessons from a young age.

And Kawada was one against whom Izuru had no personal qualms other than a desire for the station he held. Professors said that if not for Kaburagi and his own submissive character, Kawada would have been running things. It was against Izuru’s nature to settle for anything less than he wanted.

What he wanted now was a crowd. Luckily, this time of the year, Kawada could usually be found playing basketball in the gym with his classmates. There were plenty of witnesses when Izuru made his appearance.

He sat himself down on one of the bleacher steps without a word, an air of purpose about him that the young men playing on the hardwood could not ignore for long. “What are you doing here, Okazaki?” Kawada said when there was a break in the game. “Doubt you've come to play with us. I always figured you more for the type who likes to watch.”

His classmates laughed along at the implication, but as far as Izuru was concerned the jibe did not deserve the breath wasted on it. “Actually, Sempai,” he said, “I’ve come to challenge you to a duel.”

“A duel?” How could that word not inspire some incredulity in this day and age? “The hell would you want to do that for?”

“Your seat in the student council.”

Startled by Izuru’s seriousness, and by his ready answer, the third-years lost interest in their game. The tension in the gym was suddenly as thick as the smell of sweat, and something more exciting seemed to be brewing. Kawada approached the bleachers as Izuru stood.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said.

“Is it?” said Izuru. “According to Saint Michel’s student council charter, a council member may be challenged for his seat by anyone who wishes to do so. If he loses, he is required to abdicate his seat to the winner.”

Kawada snorted. “There’s nothing like that in there.” But Izuru sensed his doubt.

“It’s in the original. The particular article has been shortened in your copy, but remains unamended. You can check if you like.” Izuru pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “I have the original in my room. We could go there together after we settle this—”

“Right. You need to work on your pickup lines, Okazaki, 'cause I ain't going anywhere with you. Why don’t you get this alleged original first and bring it here so I can see it?”

“What difference will it make? If I’m bluffing, it’s no skin off your back.”

Kawada considered the proposition. “You better not be wasting my time, Okazaki,” he said after a few moments. Apparently he found something appealing about the idea of soundly, and publicly, beating the second-year. Or else he couldn't bring himself to refuse before a dozen pairs of waiting eyes. Either way, Izuru doubted he would have accepted if he saw his underclassman as much of a threat. “What'll it be? Horse?”

Izuru pretended to think it over as well as he stepped onto the court, sized Kawada up. “I was thinking something more hands-on. Less gentleman-like.”

“Like what?”

“Does that mean you accept the conditions of the duel and any possible ramifications?” Kawada impatiently nodded, and Izuru allowed himself a small smile. “I want you to pin me—knock me down,” he said, “until I can't get up. Use whatever method you feel comfortable with.”

“Jesus, you _are_ a sick son-of-a- . . .” The vice-president continued to regard him as though waiting for the punchline of a bad joke. Izuru let him stew. He removed his jacket, tossing it in the direction of the bleachers. His manner all the while was so casual, it did little to put one in the fighting spirit. “You’re serious?” Kawada asked.

“I’m serious.”

Kawada snorted and turned as if to go, dribbling the ball before him on the gymn floor as if the whole thing was not worth his time. Then, without warning, he spun and launched the ball at his underclassman, hoping to catch Izuru off guard so that he might not see the punch that followed it until it was too late.

Unfortunately for him, Izuru saw it coming. He ignored the sting of the ball as it bounced off his shoulder, caught Kawada's incoming wrist with one hand, and landed an upper cut to his jaw with the other. The vice-president reeled back, holding the sore spot in disbelief. Okazaki Izuru wasn't the type who looked like he could land a hit so easily.

That disbelief only last a second, however, before the desire to get revenge for his public humiliation overpowered anything else. Kawada rushed at Izuru again; and again Izuru found a handhold, this time throwing the two of them down on the hard, wooden floor.

They grappled, Kawada struggling to gain an advantage over his junior so that he might knock him into submission. But Izuru would not allow Kawada out of his own grip for more than an instant. He caught a knee or two in his side, but nothing that particularly slowed him down. An observer would have been able to see from the focused expression on his face that he had a plan, one which he simply would not allow Kawada to thwart; in the meantime, he could be patient, literally roll with the punches, even if, to the other third-year students watching from the sidelines—busy cheering on their classmate and checking to see that no teacher was coming to break up the fun—Izuru did not seem to have any clear advantage.

That did not stop him, however, from getting Kawada in a choke hold. Although he was technically still on top, the vice-president’s struggling grew feebler as he realized that this time he could not be able to shrug out of it. The other students quieted, some swore, all trying to make something out of the mass of their tangled limbs and see if what they suspected was true, that a boy of Izuru’s stature had managed to pin one of the third year's top athletes.

“Give up yet?” Izuru muttered into Kawada’s ear. Through his gritted teeth and heavy breathing, his voice nonetheless remained perfectly calm.

Still, Kawada resisted. “I’m not giving my seat up to a second-year for this,” he grunted, renewing his effort to free himself. “Faggot bastar—”

Izuru shifted into a slightly better position, effectively cutting the other’s mobility down another notch. Kawada’s curse trailed off with a grunt as Izuru's arm dug deeper into his windpipe. He bent his knees, trying to gain some leverage from the polished floor as Izuru said to him, “You might want to reconsider. I’m not going to let you up until you surrender, so if that’s really what you want, we could be here a while. Or, I suppose if you accidentally passed out in front of all these witnesses, that would settle whether I won without any doubt. . . .”

Kawada grunted in pain. One of his classmates, his eyes wide, said, “Jesus, Okazaki, you trying to kill him?”

That was all the prodding Kawada needed. “Okay . . .” he managed to gasp out, “you win. . . .”

“What was that?”

“I said, you win! You can be vice-president for all I care!”

Satisfied, Izuru released him and stood with all the ease and grace of a cat. Kawada rolled to his side on the floor, rubbing his own throat.

“That’s all I needed to hear,” Izuru said as he went to retrieve his jacket. He tugged his rumpled shirt into its proper place, and ran a hand through his hair, though he hardly looked like someone who'd just been grappling on a hard, wood floor. The grin on his lips could be called no less than devilish.

* * *

Things were different the next day, however, when Izuru dropped in on the student council in their offices, Fujisawa at his side like some sort of standard-bearer. In fact, the title would have fit him well, for it was the twenty-year-old document he held against his chest that the school would once again hold as sacred and worth abiding by in short time, if the two had their way. They already had about them the air of two rebels staging a glorious coup d’etat.

In sharp contrast, the looks on the faces of the student body president Kaburagi and Hinoki, the dorm chief, were sheer surprise. Kawada suddenly appeared nervous.

Somewhat surprised to see him himself, Izuru said, “Kawada, what are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here, Okazaki?” said Kaburagi. “This isn't a meeting for class captains.” He registered Fujisawa’s presence with little more than a dark look, similar to the one he had given Izuru when they passed in the chapel toilet a few days before. Fujisawa grinned in response, like a child anticipating his favorite part of a well-known story.

Izuru narrowed his eyes. “I’m not here as class captain,” he said. “I’m here to fulfill my duties as the new student body vice-president. Which is why, frankly, I’m a little surprised to see Kawada-sempai here. He didn’t inform you two of the situation?”

Hinoki, a deceptively studious-looking young man, glanced at his fellow officer from behind his glasses. “What situation?” he said.

“We had a deal. Didn’t we, Sempai?” Izuru's penetrating gaze never wavered from Kawada's. “You’re not trying to back out of it, are you, after all that trouble?”

Kawada returned his stare awkwardly, too stubborn to look away and too cowardly to step up to the challenge that was just as clear in Izuru's eyes as his words.

“What the hell are you talking about, Okazaki?” Kaburagi said instead, his drawl laced with the decadence of idleness that is the natural outgrowth of aristocratic upbringing—the ugly, deep-rooted arrogance of the noble title his family was forced to give up after the war evident in his insolent slouch behind the cherry desk.

It was exactly what Izuru and Fujisawa hated about this student council, perhaps because they embodied that same sense of righteousness themselves in what they could only argue was a purer variation born of capitalism, of the meritocracy. Kaburagi’s air of invincibility, transparent and feeble next to his own, made Izuru smile. Their so-called president did not know what it meant to be truly fearless. Izuru cooed, “I’ll show you.”

They handed over the document. It was the complete and unabridged charter that was written in the late 1970s, they told Kaburagi, and it guaranteed the student council officers even more power over the student body than they already assumed. “The headmaster and some of the older professors we asked assured us it was genuine and valid,” Fujisawa said in answer to the obvious question, “albeit reluctantly. You can see for yourself why they wouldn’t want to be entirely forthcoming with something like this. It would make us kings.”

“Who’s talking about kings?” said Kawada. “If the officers of the student council have ultimate authority, we don’t have to put any stock in these duels if we decide not to.”

“And violate the charter?” Izuru said, feigning shock. “The very thing that gave you that power? That would be like if creation itself opposed God, or if a brain decided it didn’t need its body to live. It’s heresy.”

“We could always put the issue before the student body,” Fujisawa added with a shrug. “I’m sure if they knew the particulars of the case, they wouldn’t have any problem determining which side was in the right. I don’t think you want to bring their opinions into a matter of this magnitude.”

What he did not need to remind the student council officers was that outside their class there were few who would not call for a deposition of any one of them, given the opportunity. Kaburagi for his cruelty, Hinoki for his corruption, Kawada for his sheer unpopularity. . . . It would be a peasant rebellion. The three of them would not admit it, but they well understood that these two second-years held their fates in their hands, and would not relinquish them without a fight. Kaburagi’s snide smile seemed to falter, and Hinoki must have been wondering if he would be next as he glanced uncertainly at Kawada. To him, at least, it seemed Kawada was a condemned man.

“I trust you’ll make the right decision. If you don’t uphold this one essential article, President Kaburagi,” Izuru said pointedly, “Dorm Chief Hinoki, what’s the point of any of them existing?”

* * *

Needless to say, the remaining officers turned on their disgraced comrade like a body does an infection, and Izuru received the single room that was the privilege of the position of vice-president in a matter of days.

He was interrupted from his moving in that evening by a knock on the open door, and was not surprised in the least to see Fujisawa standing in the door frame, his characteristic sneer planted firmly on his lips. “So, this is your new room?” He gave a half-hearted whistle. “Must be nice to have a single. I would be jealous—if I weren’t getting my own in a few days’ time.”

He entered the room and closed the door behind himself.

“What do you want?” Izuru said.

Fujisawa’s smug grin remained more fixed than ever. “Is that how you greet someone who's done you a great favor? I suppose you would have found out from someone soon enough that Kaburagi has relinquished his position as president of the student body.”

His news did not get much of a reaction, let alone the one he wanted. “You already heard.”

Izuru responded with an ambivalent gesture.

“C’mon, Okazaki, what’s wrong with you?” Fujisawa gave him a patronizing shake of the head as he closed the distance between them. “With him and Kawada out of the way there’ll be no one to oppose us.”

Izuru smiled coolly. “I’m glad to hear it. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“I thought you might want to congratulate me.”

“You thought you’d rub it in.”

Fujisawa shrugged. What he really wanted, what Izuru gave him gladly, was something else. These pretenses were always so transparent. So he was not in the least taken aback when Izuru grabbed the back of his collar and pressed his parted lips to Fujisawa’s. Fujisawa unbuttoned Izuru’s jacket, slipping his hands underneath to rest them on Izuru’s narrow hips. He didn't mind Izuru holding him in place, pushing his tongue into his mouth; it was a refreshing change of pace. It was only when Fujisawa moved to undo his trousers that Izuru stepped back. “Undress yourself,” he said shortly.

Shrugging off his classmate's brusque mood as none of his business, Fujisawa began to do as he was told. Never mind that Izuru was watching him as though he expected Fujisawa to bolt at any moment.

Once Fujisawa had unbuttoned his shirt, Izuru ran out of patience, and his boldness turned to violent need. He pulled Fujisawa to him by his tie for another kiss, and pushed him back toward the bed. Small piles of neatly folded clothes, waiting to be put away, were crushed and wrinkled beneath their bodies. Izuru pushed Fujisawa down into the mattress by his shoulders and straddled his hips. Then, puzzling Fujisawa who had expected more, he did nothing else.

“How did you do it?” Izuru asked him.

“Does it really matter?” Fujisawa made a motion to sit up, but Izuru would not allow him. “Or is it some kind of turn on?”

“I want to know.”

The smug smile returned to Fujisawa's lips. “We exchanged a few choice words at the kendo club meeting. I convinced him some evidence could be gathered and that it would be in his and his family’s best interest if he quietly admitted defeat.”

“What do you mean? That you threatened to sue him?” Izuru sounded unimpressed. His eyes narrowed. “I thought you were going to beat the shit out of him.”

Fujisawa’s smile wavered. “Sure, I could have done that. . . . But a duel of wits is pretty grueling, too, you know.” He raised a hand, sliding it up along the inseam of Izuru’s thigh. “What does it matter how I get the job done as long as I’m student body president?”

“ _President_?”

The icy tone of Izuru’s question made him freeze.

“Who said anything about _you_ being president?”

“You're joking, right?” Fujisawa said. “Hey, I was the one who got Kaburagi out of the picture. Since he was president, according to that document, I get his position.”

“That depends. There is the question of whether you technically beat him or whether he simply stepped down.”

“It doesn’t matter! It's too late to be starting this bullshit now, Okazaki. If you wanted to be president so bad, you should have just challenged me when I said I would take Kaburagi. When you didn’t, it seemed to me like we had a deal.”

“And I thought you were just in it for revenge,” Izuru said as he stared down his nose at Fujisawa. “We never had a deal. The only _deal_ was that we were going to take them out. I assumed it was obvious the next step would be to divvy up the spoils among us accordingly.”

“Accordingly?”

“Yes. According to who is better suited for each position.”

A low growl rose from somewhere inside Fujisawa. He tried to raise himself onto his elbows, but it was awkward with Izuru’s weight planted firmly on his lower body.

“Now, since I was the one who found out about the charter and brought it back into the light of day,” Izuru continued, “and the one who suggested the duels in the first place, I believe it’s only fair I be entitled first pick. Not to mention that given our personalities and our respective standings with the student body and faculty, it simply makes sense that someone like me should be leader and someone like you my lieutenant, doesn’t it?” He chuckled, adding, “After all, I am our class captain—”

“Not a chance in hell,” Fujisawa snarled. “This is robbery, is what it is. I won fair and square.” He moved to get up and push Izuru off of him, but Izuru refused to let him go. His knee in Fujisawa's gut pushed him back into the mattress, pinning him there. Fujisawa grunted at that sharp weight pressing into him. “Get off me, you traitor. You disgust me.”

Izuru only smiled at the epithet. He wrapped Fujisawa’s tie around his hand in what was almost an absent manner, gripping it fondly as he cocked his head. “Would you like to challenge me to a duel and solve the matter that way?” he said in a low voice. “Because I wouldn’t mind. It might be kind of fun, actually. I should warn you, though, that I could accidentally kill you if you pushed me too far.”

His fingers were cool as he ran them over Fujisawa’s neck, a contrite look on his face that Fujisawa knew better than to trust. Even for being so slight, Izuru had always been the stronger of the two physically. But Fujisawa, for his part, was made of tougher stuff than either of the third-years they had defeated; he didn’t come with the same overriding sense of self-preservation that they did. He had been cut from the same cloth as Izuru, and would not give up so easily. He met Izuru’s gaze boldly, trusting that would say enough.

A small smile, wicked in its intention, appeared on Izuru’s face as he bent to speak into Fujisawa’s ear: “I _never_ planned on settling for anything less than president. Come on, you know me well enough by now to have expected that. You’re dead wrong if you think I’m going to change my mind now, Fujisawa.”

Though he could not help a grimace of discomfort whenever Izuru shifted his weight on that knee, Fujisawa could not bring himself to do anything but stare his classmate down. It killed him to give Izuru the satisfaction of seeing him give in. But on the other hand, Fujisawa had caught a glimpse of a side to his classmate that he knew nothing about, and could not be sure that Izuru would not follow through on his threats. Conceding to himself that there was little he could do at this time, Fujisawa finally raised a hand to the one that gripped his tie in a gesture of surrender.

That did not mean, of course, that in his heart he was defeated. The disgust Fujisawa had for himself at that moment and the resentment that burned within him over this betrayal ensured that the battle was far from over. Though neither would ever have said that they had been friends, some relationship had nonetheless existed between them that was now wounded beyond repair, beyond reconcile. Without words, an understanding passed between them that from this point on they would be mortal enemies.

* * *

The next morning as he was walking to class, someone called out to him, “Hey, Okazaki!”

Izuru turned, only to have a fist collide with his left cheek. “You asshole!” Fujisawa growled, with no concern for the students who gathered around them, some of whom automatically stepped forward to get between the two young men.

One of their classmates offered to help, but Izuru shrugged him off. “I’m fine,” he said, though his cheekbone felt raw and hot as he touched it gently with the tips of his fingers. If he were honest, the punch had not shaken him as much as it might have coming from someone else, in a different situation. From Fujisawa, though, it was almost to be expected. “I guess I deserved that.”

“Yeah, you’re damn right you did. —Hey, I got it out of my system,” Fujisawa said to the boys trying to hold him back.

In fact, it was Izuru they had a right to be worried about, though no one stepped forward to stop him from retaliating. After what had happened to Kawada and Kaburagi—and, after all, the power of rumor was greater than the truth—they probably expected Izuru to return the punch and a fight to break out. They were to be disappointed.

“This doesn’t change anything,” Izuru said. The onlookers could make of that what they may; this did not concern them. “I hope you realize that.”

“Yeah.” Fujisawa cracked a painful grin. “But I feel a hell of a lot better.”

“Then I’ll expect you in the student council's office after last bell. I’m calling a meeting to announce the changes officially.” And Izuru left it at that, trusting there were enough witnesses for word to get around before the day was over.

At the meeting of the student council after class that day, he and Fujisawa appeared together at the head of the table as president and vice-president respectively. No one, not even Izuru, seemed to mind the bruise beginning to form under his eye. He wore it like it was a battle scar, and he fresh from the campaign. And victory. It was he who held the original copy of the student council’s charter now, and who addressed those who were assembled.

Breaking with routine, he had insisted on a more open setting for his first speech, opening the event to other students and even faculty. The latter stood along the side of the room, stoic expressions on their faces as they knew not what to expect. Students peered eagerly into the room from the doorways, passing word along to those who could not see or hear clearly. Izuru did not see Mitani among the crowd, but it did more to encourage than daunt him to think of what his teacher would hear of this later.

He appeared before them part prophet and part circus ringleader, first seducing and then guiding the attention of his captive audience from one talking point to another. “It is through the grace of God,” Izuru dared to say, “that we were able to overthrow our corrupt student government—to sever the head of the Beast, if you will—and we owe it to this.” He held the charter enclosed in its old Moroccan leather portfolio above his shoulder, as though it were a relic that might bless them with some hidden light.

“In it are rules set down by our predecessors, the first students to graduate from this school, that the generations that followed forgot. They believed, and wisely so, that a student should have the right to challenge a leader if he thinks the founding values of this school have been neglected or abused, and that he could do a better job in upholding them as they were meant to be upheld. That, in short, is what we have done, in order that we may correct the moral stagnation that reigned under your former leaders, Kaburagi and Kawada. Saint Michel will soon forget their small, empty contributions, but we will make sure the vision of our predecessors is preserved for the classes of the future.”

An observer might have wondered, if he had been privy to the secret goings on of these two young men who now stood before the school as though they were angels come down from on high to guard the Arc of the Covenant that was the charter, if there was not an element of hypocrisy to Izuru’s speech. Couldn’t it be that they only planned on using their offices for their own personal gratification? The question would not have been unfounded; but it was at the same time fair to say that Izuru—to say nothing of Fujisawa—truly believed what he said. Or, that he belived the activities in which he took pleasure in private, that hurt no one in the Pauline sense, were an issue separate from this and therefore exclusively compatable. They simply could not be compared to one another.

One might have wondered, too, if the students who listened would really be sold on such outdated ideas of propriety as those Izuru appeared to be peddling. The difference between his speech and Father Robert’s liturgies was a simple matter of semantics. No doubt there were bound to be some third-years who had prospered under Kaburagi’s wing the last term who would not go along with the new reigme without nurturing some deep misgivings; but they must have understood nonetheless that Izuru and Fujisawa’s coup was about a greater issue, one that held a place of considerable respect among the student hierarchy:

The dealing out of dues.

As for the other students, whether they had been oppressed or not, one could say that they had been put under a kind of spell by Izuru’s speaking. When he said they should take pride in being Christian students of such a renowned school, they were forced to think how lacking they had been in ways in which they could take pride before, and suddenly they longed to grasp that glory which he spoke of. Like it was sweet nutrition for their souls they only now realized were impoverished, when he said that they should live by the ideals of Christ in all aspects of school life, they truly wanted to feel the satisfaction of a salvation he seemed to promise would light up their hearts and academic records.

So, for the faculty, who every now and then nodded reluctantly at something profound Izuru had to say, this new student body president was in many ways a dream come true. They could not have known from where he got his inspiration—their memories were not that faithful—or even that it was borrowed in almost every respect. Perhaps they would not have cared, and would have praised Mitani even more for his influence if they knew how responsible he was.

Nor was there any way of knowing that Izuru had little intention to obey his own edicts. But just how, not even he could imagine at that time.

Nonetheless, the faculty formed a picture in their minds of two shining bastions of truth and beauty, of one crying out in the wilderness, another preaching to the crows, the two cutting edges of the proverbial double-edged sword of a holy tongue—a powerful, seraphic image that was precisely what Izuru and Fujisawa had started out with the intent to convey for themselves. If they could do almost anything they wanted before, they could get away with murder now, or worse. These were not leaders of a student democracy but monarchs. Kings who could denounce the very world if they wanted to, and two hundred young men would follow them into the abyss with hardly a question—like sheep to the slaughter, and their shepherds along with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics quoted at the beginning come from the song "Forbidden Colours" by Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian.  
> The names of the original student council members are borrowed from Mishima Yukio's novel _Forbidden Colors_. Everyone else is from volume 4 of the manga.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, Sensei, wait up!”

Mitani looked up on his way back to the teachers’ office. Though the call could have been meant for any of the professors here, somehow he recognized the tone of voice Izuru always used when he spoke to him. Does he use it with his other professors as well? Mitani wondered briefly, which in turn led him to wonder why it suddenly bothered him to think Izuru did.

The thought was swept from his mind, however, when his gaze alighted on the boy jogging across the square to join him. The autumn wind had been blowing lightly all day, and it tussled his hair and jacket as he raced to catch up, and scattered the brown-purple leaves of the plum trees that fell to the cobblestones like burnt scraps of paper behind him. In contrast to the decay of the season, Izuru’s cheeks were flushed from the cold wind, and his eyes shown bright and fresh when he grinned open-mouthed to catch his breath. How exclusive that expression seemed, how utterly unlike the Izuru he usually allowed everyone to see. Not for the first time, it had an effect on Mitani, who felt priveleged to witness it.

He said perhaps a little too quickly, “I didn't get to tell you before, Okazaki, but congratulations on your becoming student council president. I heard what you said in the meeting yesterday, about how you plan to turn that office around.”

“Yeah?” Izuru couldn't help himself. He beamed.

Mitani nodded. “Your goal to clean up the student body, and try to emulate the teachings of Christ in academic life—I’m sure that’s exactly the kind of ethic the council’s founders had in mind.”

“I’m glad you think so.” In truth, Izuru had not given much thought to his professor’s reaction. He had not allowed himself to expect anything. After all, “It was you who inspired me, Sensei. If you want to know the truth of it. It wasn’t just your lectures either. I believe you were right in saying we should be concerned about the role of faith in our futures. In fact,” the words kept flowing all on their own, for fear of winding up with nothing to say, “that was what I wanted to talk to you about, the future—that is, if you’re not too busy. Of course, you know I’ll start looking into universities after the start of next term, and I was wondering—”

“I would gladly give you whatever help you need,” Mitani said. Had he responded too quickly? he wondered immediately after, but Izuru smiled in gratitude.

When he turned briefly toward the sun, Mitani’s gaze fell on the raw patch that remained below the boy's eye and the bruise that had formed around it. His eyes had been drawn to it ever since yesterday morning's lecture, but every time he had thought he might be caught he had quickly looked away, leaving a short pause in his lecture like a jitter in a recording. Now that they were outside of class, he ventured, “Okazaki, how did you . . . How did that happen?”

“Mm?” Izuru turned back to him. “Oh. It was nothing. I had a disagreement with someone is all. Lovers’ quarrel.”

Mitani started. A sudden warmth as the blood rushed to his skin. “What?”

“It was a joke,” Izuru amended quickly. And a bad one, he chastised himself.

“You’re not in any trouble, are you?” Mitani raised a hand as though to touch his wound, but then thought better of it. It would have been inappropriate, in or outside the classroom. But Izuru found himself wishing his professor had not been so self-conscious. “Does it hurt?”

Izuru put a hand to his cheek. “Not really. Like I said, it’s nothing.” He hated to be so short, but it just came out as such when he said, untruthfully, “I wish you wouldn’t be so concerned about me, Sensei.”

“Sorry.” Mitani flashed a timid smile. “It’s just that you’re a conundrum to me, Okazaki. When I heard how you stood up to your upperclassmen, I couldn't help thinking what confidence and drive that must have taken, that I would never have had at your age. I'm proud of you.”

Izuru felt his heart leap when Mitani said those words that he had thought he had wanted only to hear. Strange, but now, for reasons he could not explain let alone understand, it did not seem like enough.

“Your answers on exams, too, they radiate a real passion and understanding for the subject.”

“You can tell that just by a couple of facts strung together in a sentence?” Izuru didn’t know why he spoke with more cynicism than he felt, when what he really was was grateful.

Mitani’s slight smile was strained by his tone. “Well, yes. Most students just repeat what the book says. I know I haven’t been a teacher for long, and maybe I’m not very traditional in what I think is important, but I guess it’s what you would call teacher’s intuition. You should really share more of your thoughts in class.”

Izuru looked away.

“And that’s the thing I don’t understand,” Mitani went on. “You’re so reserved in my lecture, but from everything I’ve heard about you from the other staff, and how you present yourself outside of my class . . . It seems like you’re two different people sometimes. It’s none of my business, but you are one of my brightest students—”

“There’s no particular reason for it,” Izuru said. Which was a lie, but then it would also have been a lie to blame shyness when it only manifested itself in one subject, in front of one professor. If only Mitani knew what kept him silent, and made his heart leap in his chest and his tongue retreat into the back of his throat every time he merely thought of being called upon, singled out by this man in front of everyone, in that same reverent tone of voice. . . .

He would laugh, I know it, Izuru thought, if I tried to tell him that the reason I won’t speak in his class is because I like him. An answer like that would only make sense to a schoolgirl with a crush. However, “If it would please you if I said more—”

He was cut off by a gust of wind that swept down through the courtyard without warning. It was a gust so strong that for a heartbeat it threatened to lift them right off the ground, or at very least tear the books from their arms. Izuru shoved his hand deeper into his pocket and scrunched his shoulders against the chill; Mitani held his books and notes closer to his body. Other students clutched at their bags. It had been a rather still day, but now the red and gold leaves were blasted from the branches they clung to so delicately, for a moment whipping away across the pavement like they were trying to escape something.

A din rose up around them. As the wind began to let up, the gulls gathered on the rooftops began to cry out as one at the top of their lungs. Taking flight, they scattered against the clear blue sky, some shitting randomly as they went, which prompted boys in the courtyard below to cover their heads. Even when the birds settled down again, their cacophony grew louder and more complex as everyone in the flock joined in in communicating what human onlookers could only describe as their panic. There was something of a vague sense of unease, even distress, in their unsettled behavior. It seemed as if to warn one another of a nearby threat, albeit a dormant one if they were not abandoning their posts completely, like a shark slowly patrolling the sea floor.

Listening to their cries that split the air filled Izuru with an inexplicable sense of dread; and watching their movements along the tops of the buildings, he thought he almost felt some sort of presence in the wind, as ridiculous as such a thought was.

There was nothing there. As far as anyone could see, the gulls were the roof's only inhabitants, aside from an occasional crow. No matter how sudden, could what startled them really have been as simple as a strong gust of air?

“I wonder what that was all about,” Mitani said beside him.

Izuru shivered, and not just from the cold. “Must have been the wind.”

* * *

Meanwhile, hidden in the shadow of human ignorance, Focalor watched with avid interest.

Duke of Hell, and one-time angel of Heaven of the Order of Thrones, long had his name been cause for much fear and anguish. Known among humans as a destroyer of ships, who had drowned hundreds of thousands of men, and among his own as a lord of distinguished loyalty and extraordinary patience.

However, these last months had been spent stewing in outrage and disgrace, plotting against the bastard human who had so upset the natural hierarchy of his world. Attitudes had changed since the Dark Ages, when his kind was truly held in awe by mankind. He understood that he could not turn back the ways of their hearts, but this offense was beyond toleration.

By accident it seemed, that human had defeated their Dragon Cavalry Brigade Commander Surgatanus. And, according to their own laws, in doing so he gained the rank and title of Surgatanus. A mere human. A powerful one, yes, but did his victory not come with the help of his friends and guardian spirits? For this upset they should all have met a swift and final death. Focalor would have laughed if the very thought did not rile him so, compounded by his brethren’s undying reverence for the laws they had made themselves and yet held sacred above all else, even reason. They would permit themselves to be lorded over by a _human_ —they who owed their very fall to Heaven’s fondness for that mortal race! Even though they complained and plotted means to usurp the offender, still they permitted it. His Lord even seemed amused by the idea, preparing himself to welcome the human under his wing.

His heedlessness disgusted Focalor.

But if it was the law that mattered, then the law he would obey. He would kill that man himself and rightfully claim the position he had coveted for so long. Though the idea of what Surgatanus might have seen in that creature’s eyes before he met his own demise continued to plague him, Focalor had convinced himself his goal could not be too difficult to reach. Then, once he became Brigade Commander himself, he would be that much closer to the other goal he had almost given up on, the one that would take all his strength, that they had told him would never succeed: of returning with his legions to the throne that awaited him in Heaven.

Existence in the world of the living had corrupted him. It was only due to his hope that he was able to wallow in his watery lair all these months without incident, steeping his wizened body in the wastefulness of humans, drowning in his hatred of them, and repeating the name of that vile usurper in his heart—the name that made his skin crawl when it spilled from his Lord’s lips: Tsuzuki Asato. He would never forget that name, not until its bearer was long erased from existence, crushed by his hands.

But in his current form, his ancient and tired shell of a body, he was no match for that man. No, in order to accomplish his goal he needed a fresh body through which he might channel his power to its fullest. And on top of that, he needed a lure.

He needed a human body.

He understood that it took a spiritual incident of significant magnitude on this Japanese island to summon this Tsuzuki, whose job it was to investigate those phenomenon that went against Meifu’s laws of death. So Focalor would create a conundrum: He would cause a soul to disappear so perfectly even God himself would be lucky to find it again.

It was about that time that Izuru and Fujisawa had stunned the school by taking control of Saint Michel’s student council in their second years. Their struggle inspired him. In either of their bodies he could be reborn and reach his ideal power. What was essential, what would make both the pact and his triumph over Tsuzuki complete, was desire. A desire equaling his own—for it was like a hunger that would destroy him, the threat of which motivated him like starvation motivates a wild animal to do the unconscionable in order to survive, if only for one more day.

He found this great desire in Okazaki Izuru.

Izuru who had everything a boy of his age could want. Wealth, a sure foot in the door of society, the finest education money could buy and the brilliant mind to appreciate it. He had the admiration of his classmates, for his character and looks; and it was with satisfaction that Focalor noted his top physical form and beauty. He was the perfect candidate, with all the attributes a devil could hope for, the last anyone would suspect.

And now Izuru was head of the student council. For all anyone could see, he should have been content. However, it was the wager that he still longed on which everything Focalor dreamed of rode.

He eavesdropped on Izuru’s thoughts and discovered the boy lusted hopelessly after his professor, that meek intellectual Mitani. How obsessed he was, entertaining fantasies about the two of them in his dreams, both during the day, with his pitiful attempts to focus his mind on matters at hand, and at night when he would sometimes act them out alone in his single, sighing, writhing and touching himself. The sort of relief that provided lasted only so long, and even worse were the dreams that tormented him with more vivid images than his conscious imagination out of shame could conjure. It was all driving him slowly mad; that much was apparent. What amazed the devil was that Izuru still could not quite see it for what it was.

No one else noticed this particular change that had come over Okazaki, either, let alone the object of his desire. Focalor, on the other hand, recognized it clearly. As the weeks passed, his course was only made clearer, and his mind more solidly set on what he must do.

* * *

“One might say,” Mitani spoke to the class as he paced the front of the room, a worn and well-loved copy of the novel in his hand. He had departed from his usual lectures to speak about it, as everyone was expected to have read it through at this point in the term. Izuru had finished it long ago, as soon as he had been able. It was his appreciation for his professor that had driven him—driven him to see why it was Mitani appreciated the book so. And Fujisawa, who had grinned knowingly that first day—it was old news to him as well. He slouched in his chair where Izuru sat at attention, but he was no less rapt at all their teacher had to say.

“One might say,” Mitani said, “that this is a book first and foremost about knowledge. It is set in a monastery, a place of learning in medieval Europe, specifically one with a huge library designed as a labyrinth, which requires substantial knowledge of scripture and geography to navigate. Our protagonists, Adso and William of Baskerville, are concerned with the search for knowledge: knowledge of the monastery and other characters, namely as they relate to the mystery at hand. But the quest for knowledge is also what leads so many to their deaths: Adelmo, Venantius, Berengar . . . everyone who goes after this book no one seems to be able to find.

“And then there are those who are concerned with the truth, like Jorge and the inquisitors. But what is truth? Can any one person have all the answers to everything? And how can one really say he is trying to get at the truth when that same person twists everything to fit the convictions he already holds, regardless of whether they are . . .” He chuckled. “True?

“So the next question is, is knowledge dangerous? Or rather, for whom, or by whom, does it become so? Obviously, one could say it became dangerous for those who died searching for it. But . . .” He glanced in Izuru’s direction briefly. “Was it the thirst to know that killed them? Regardless of what physically did them in, I mean. Isn’t it true that for those who _control_ knowledge, those who _have_ power, that these same forces can be dangerous in the hands of those beneath them? There is this idea, obviously shared not just among the men in power, but also those who fear that to actually think—to use our minds logically—indeed, to have an appreciation for something as human as humor is to encroach on the realm of the Devil.

“So, what is it that makes this book controversial?” he said now to the other side of the classroom, holding the book aloft in a manner not unlike that of a preacher. “I’m not talking about what Adelmo and Berengar were up to, either,” he clarified to some awkward laughter. “These themes apply to our lives, whether we live now or five hundred years ago—or five hundred years in the future, for that matter. The question of whether information should be free or restricted, and by how much. Not to mention its portrayal of the Church’s often ugly past, particularly in its treatment of heretics which we Japanese Christians can relate to as a shameful part of our own history.

“And as for the heretics. . . . What do you make of them? Are they sinners, or just searching for the truth like any of us? Or both? So many of the things we take for granted as truths now were considered controversy then—not just in Europe’s middle ages but since the founding of Christianity. The concept that Christ was poor, for example. We accept it today as tradition, but for the leaders of the Church in the thirteenth, fourteenth century nothing could be more dangerous than to question their moral and spiritual integrity by saying that he was. What these heretics were saying by upholding Christ's poverty, essentially, was that the Church was not only not imitating Christ, but going against the very lifestyle he preached! Imagine! It was their audacity to make _those kinds of claims_ that got them killed, more often than not, because there were many—or at least a few who had great power, anyway—who thought that kind of preaching had to be silenced at any costs.

“Like this issue of whether Christ laughed. I know, you’re probably thinking, where’s the issue? But what you have to understand is that to men like Jorge, laughter was a bestial emotion; and if it was bestial for ordinary men, how much more offensive was it to claim that the son of God, brought into this world without original sin, would have loved a good joke, let alone used one to get his message across. So you had texts like the _Coena Cypriani_ mentioned in the story that were banned as sacrilegious although they were said to reveal secret moral lessons under the ‘veil of mirth,’ albeit more often than not in an obscene fashion.

“So this is the question I pose to you, even though it’s just as much a matter of philosophy as history: If there are no absolutes to measure by, how are we to determine what is moral behavior? We can’t abolish ‘morality’ completely, and let everyone decide for himself what is the truth and what is deception. Or do you think we can? Yes?”

One of the boys had raised his hand, and now seemed surprised to actually be called upon. He said uncertainly, “Well . . . yeah. I mean, within reason, of course—”

“But then how do you determine reason?” said one from the back corner of the room. Those around him laughed, but it was the nervous laugh of those who did not know the answer themselves. “Obviously you have to have _some_ references,” said the first boy in response.

Mitani chuckled. “I think what you have there is the great paradox.”

Izuru smiled. Though he only listened, he felt like he were the novice Adso listening to one of William of Baskerville’s lectures: Ultimately few would understand, including himself at first, but he could not shake the feeling that the truths hidden in the lecture were meant primarily for him. For he found in himself a certain nostalgia for the atmosphere of the fourteenth century as he sat there, when one could still be tortured and burned for having an outlandish idea. He envied the steadfastness of the heretics turned martyrs, their willingness to die for an idea. It was so unlike that modern sentiment expressed by Endo Shusaku and taken up by their professor that it was easier to apostatize, if only in words, and live with the weight of guilt than see one’s beloveds suffer, let alone suffer bodily harm oneself. Better to chew off your own leg, in other words, and live lame another day than die in the trap.

Though Izuru could not imagine giving up his life for love of God, as the triumph and subsequent complacency of Christianity in the late-twentieth century would not allow him to, he could see himself giving it up, if for no other reason than to die for a conviction. Or in spite of one. It didn’t matter. It was not that he lacked a sense of self-preservation; in fact, one could say that it was strong in him. But it was that sort of drive, after all, that was at the heart of true patriotism and true faithfulness which led one to romanticize death as the ultimate act of honor.

Fujisawa, whose passion for the novel seemed to match his own, was not so unlike him, although one might have compared him rather to the inquisitor than the martyr, if for no other reason than the apparent joy he took hearing of others’ suffering. But couldn’t it be said that they were oppressed equally under Father Robert and the Ministry of Education’s high and blind ideals about the morality of Saint Michel’s students? Adelmo and Berengar, they had sought knowledge of a different kind, not just that which could be found in a book. The conviction that there was some kernel of divine purity at the heart of sexual pleasure got Fra Dolcino burned at the stake, and that was sex with women. How much more forbidden, more heretical—and more allowed—had been the secret goings on in the young monks’ dormitories as they sought the truth in each other's bodies. How much more Izuru glorified their deaths in his mind, how innocent and genuine they became for him, thinking that in any other time he would only hope to imitate them. How admirable it was for death to mean something, if only to the dying.

Another boy spoke up and said, “If we’re Christians, why don’t we just go by what the Bible tells us?”

“And whose interpretation do you propose we go by?”

That was Fujisawa, who had been suspiciously quiet throughout the entire class period. Surprised, perhaps by the clarity his voice seemed to have in that one sentence, Mitani said, “Fujisawa brings up an excellent point. The Bible has been used to justify a number of radically different, even contradictory viewpoints over the years. Zwingli and Luther both claimed it as their only source, and yet they couldn’t reach a compromise over its interpretation.”

“Which is not necessarily a bad thing,” said Fujisawa, sitting up with an air worthy of the student body vice-president. “All things considered, I think a deconstructionist attitude is the lesser of two evils. In fact, I would go a step further: rule by shame. It’s the best way to keep people in line. And, of course, knowledge leads to shame.”

A few of the students snorted and rolled their eyes. It sounded like something Father Robert would say.

“I’m serious,” Fujisawa told them. A cocky grin spread across his lips. “Case in point, the garden of Eden. What is original sin but man’s punishment for choosing reason over irrational animal instinct? And why else do you think they call sex ‘carnal _knowledge_ ’?”

“Er, that’s an interesting argument,” Mitani said, but the excitement he had exhibited over the beginning of the discussion quickly dwindled into what seemed a defensive tone of voice. “But we seem to be drifting off the topic and running out of time, and I wanted to discuss the role of the Minorites a bit before we stop for today. . . .”

* * *

That night seemed unseasonably warm in the dormitories. The waves were high and could be clearly heard crashing against the rocks and concrete walls from the open window, but there was only a faint breeze moving through. Izuru longed for it to come in and cool the fire that burned inside him, but it remained merely heard and out of reach, much to his frustration. The “noontime devil” moved around even stronger at night. Now when Izuru closed his eyes he saw only Mitani, and remembered how his professor had often smiled at him timidly, and how he had breathed and held himself when they stood close to one another as Izuru asked him a question after class the day before. And how he had smelled. The sound of the crashing waves seemed to call Izuru's name, and in his mind it was Mitani whispering in his ear, breathing against his neck. . . .

Izuru was unable to concentrate on anything else. He abandoned his studies and lay back on his bed, not bothering to turn down the sheets. With the change of position, he could not ignore his arousal any longer if he wanted to. He bit his lip and shifted his hips as his erection strained the crotch of his school pants, and the friction made his head swim.

In the dark he had fewer reservations about admitting what he tried to deny to himself in the day: He wanted Mitani. He wanted him so much he felt he would explode from the pressure. Eyes shut to better lose himself in the world of his thoughts, Izuru slid his hand under the hem of his shirt, caressing his stomach, imagining it was Mitani touching him. Absently, he undid the buttons of the shirt, bared himself to the heavy night air. His legs parted to relieve the pressure building between them, but he only wound up wondering instead how it would feel to have Mitani between his thighs, inside him, and the strain in his groin grew almost painful with anticipation at that thought. He moaned quietly, and the sea continued to call him.

 _I . . . zu . . . ru . . . i . . . zu . . . ru . . ._

. . . went the cycle of ebb, flow, and crash. He paid it no more heed than anything else in his fantasy. His fingertips brushed over a nipple. “Sensei,” he whispered in answer, turning into the pillow. Kissing the imaginary lips of his professor, he heard Mitani’s breathing echoed in his own, quickening next to his skin. He undid the button of his fly, gasping at the slight, sudden release, and touched himself beneath the stiff material of his uniform trousers. His hips began to move in slow circles.

It was only in the back of his mind that Izuru knew he was not alone.

He was too engrossed in his fantasy to see the dark and supple body, thick as a tree trunk, that slid itself into his room through the open window. It made hardly a sound as it moved toward him—or rather, the sound so perfectly matched the hush of the sea and the wind that it seemed like no sound at all. It wove through the shadows toward the foot of the bed; and as it slowly made its way up the length of Izuru’s body, hovering above him, he writhed and arched toward it in mindless pleasure. The creature took amusement in this. In the boy's vulnerable state, he could not be bothered to tell the difference between a danger and his imaginary lover. Which merely meant that, so far, Focalor had been right.

The creature let out a hiss of laughter like the clatter of pebbles in the tide, and Izuru started. “Who’s there?” he asked, but even then the alarm in his voice was clouded by a stubborn lust. Focalor moved back a little ways into the shadow.

After a tense pause, he breathed the boy’s name again. “ _I-zu-ru. . . ._ ” For a moment he doubted his old skills, but he caught the rise of Izuru’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed and was convinced otherwise.

“Who are you?” Izuru whispered. His eyes were closing again, he was falling back into his waking dream, and Focalor took the opportunity to move closer for a better look at the body that would soon be his. Skin thin and wrinkled like parchment brushed against Izuru’s thighs and his bare chest as he moved, causing Izuru to moan.

With another low chuckle, Focalor answered him: “ _You know who I am._ ”

The room’s invader was a dim shape, already difficult to make out, like the elusive figure of a monster in dreams, always barely escaping the eye, and in the dark it was even less distinct. Nonetheless, what hovered above Izuru on its vestigial limbs was a long and serpentine creature, perhaps nine meters in length, that moved in rippling coils. Like a wave slowly moving to shore and melting into the one behind it, the gentle undulation of its body had a seductive, feminine quality despite its grotesque appearance. The hide was a muddy black and covered by a mail shirt of long tough scales, which shone like a cloak of electrum where the faint light hit it with its own oils, or perhaps the accumulation of millennia-long immersion in the silty ocean depths and the muck of the human world that polluted them. Sprouting from behind its gills and from bony protuberances above each set of spindly arms, were great wings or fins, though their appearance was more like sails, their masts twisted and knotted like maple wood. The skin stretched between those bones, thick and embroidered with myriad wrinkled black veins, was like vellum or a silken fabric in the way it billowed around the body with each breath and flex.

Its head was bald except for a scraggly beard like seaweed or burnt flesh that peels away from the body hanging from the lower jaw, and was skeletal in its texture and appearance like the skull of some prehistoric fish, bursting with a brain that had had a hundred millennia to evolve within its primitive constraints. The jaw was hinged far back in the head, able to detach itself to swallow larger prey like a python’s, but fixed in a permanent death grin as it was not covered by the unnecessary flesh of cheek or lips. Stiletto-like teeth, the longest as long as a human radius, jutted from either side of this creature’s mouth in the manner of a viperfish, curving out and up towards the eyes, or down over the chin.

But most striking of all for Focalor’s victim were its eyes. Set low and in the front of the head, they were massive and bulged out of their sockets, each swiveling of its own accord. Though fiery in color, they glowed an almost diseased white with an internal, phosphorescent light. And the tiny slits of pupils, that focused so keenly on their target, never breaking eye contact, made those eyes seem even more blind, though hardly lifeless. The lids, what little the creature had of them, were so thin one could see the pupil rolling underneath with each leisurely blink.

And yet Izuru was not frightened—at least not in the sense that men are usually frightened. He was not disgusted, nor did he fear for his life. It was not the goal of the devil to turn away his victims but to bring them closer, to tempt them, to gain their trust—indeed to supplicate himself. In order to be successful, the boy had to believe he would not be hurt and, in fact, that the greater benefit would be his.

But he must not ask for that guarantee or else the freedom to do what the devil had in mind would not be granted. A difficult task to accomplish while possessing of such an unnatural and grotesque vessel, but Focalor was not worried. The tools of the devil were many and multifaceted, a maze of temptation and logical contradiction without beginning or end. His body’s breathing was as regular and gentle as the waves, and the low rumbling from the back of his throat which repeated Izuru’s name like a mantra rocked the boy like his dream-lover’s arms. It was not a putrid odor that he breathed, but something not meant for this world. Something like lilacs or apricot blossoms mingled with the astringent scent of brine and kelp—the smell of saints to confuse that already blurry line between purity and corruption.

Already enthralled by his own lust, Izuru could only focus on the eyes of that angel—albeit one fallen—so radiant, so beautiful it was terrifying, so intangible he wanted nothing more than to possess its magnificence. And with that sweet voice that was as calming as ripples on a pond, he would have done almost anything the creature asked.

 _“You know me,”_ the devil told him. _“It was you who summoned me to be your servant, though perhaps you were not aware of it. Yet I heard you,”_ he assured the boy gently, his words slow like a chant, like a noh actor lulling his audience into a trance, _“because we are the same, you and I. We both long for something that is beyond our reach—something we have been told we are not allowed to have, and that is tearing us up at the seams because of it.”_

Izuru gasped when he heard that, and Focalor gave a low laugh of satisfaction.

 _“You wonder how I knew? I know everything—about your secret, your sin, your desire. Your body speaks of it loudly, crying out with every fiber of your being, filling my ears with its hunger. I have seen as though through your own eyes how you look after that man . . . Mitani.”_

Mitani. That was a name Izuru recognized—a face he longed to have look only on him, that always retreated from him like the water around Tantalus when he reached out for it.

 _“He does not return your feelings, does he? No. . . . But how could he? He does not realize what is in his own heart. Not yet. He is too busy looking at his feet on the ground. But I could make him look up, Izuru. Yes, look up and see_ you _. For a pittance, I could—indeed, I would give you anything your heart desired. I would make you king of the world if you wished it, and you must believe, it would take no large effort on my part. Fame, wealth, adoration. . . . You could be set up for life. Even the slightest whim would be my pleasure. All you need do is ask and you shall receive. Is that not what the Gospels tell you to do? Well, I can make more than empty promises. I can make your dreams reality.”_

The devil felt for his mind, the train of his thoughts, searching for some clue he was on the right track. The creature’s thick tongue moved in its maw like a bird in a cage, behind the sinister smile, tasting the air and the scent rising off of his victim. It told him what he already suspected, that there was no change in the direction of the boy’s thoughts.

 _“But, no. That is not enough for you. You do not want those things, those responsibilities. You have everything you could possibly want already, except. . . .”_ Yes, he felt it clearly now as he absorbed the boys emotions into his own self, into the nuclei of his cells, more clearly than he had that day in the courtyard. _“Yes, everything except him._

 _“I beg of you, Izuru, I prostrate myself at your feet,”_ the devil said, _“I am your servant, to do with as you wish. But I require a small favor in return. It would hardly be fair if only one of us benefited by my grace, would it not? I can only give so much, Izuru, for I have suffered so much. I have been wronged as you have been wronged, denied as you have been denied. And my soul has burned in torment over it. This shell of a body, it grows old. I feel the weight of the years, countless centuries. Millennia. . . . Can you imagine this pain of yours lasting millennia, Izuru? It wastes this body away, just as the world wastes away, Izuru, into oblivion in corruption and suffering and blasphemous nonsense, and I am sickened by it.”_

Izuru was sickened by it. The endless, meaningless parable of life at Saint Michel without Mitani’s constant presence, without any sign the admiration that Izuru so devoutly gave was returned—

 _“I am tired of being sickened by it. And who will help us to break free from our suffering, Izuru? Where is the god they make you worship in this temple of greed and vanity when you need him most? Why, he has abandoned you—abandoned you because what you seek to enter is a world that he forbade, Izuru, just as he forbade me that world I once called my home, my empire. Do you not see what a cruel god he is, Izuru?”_

Izuru did see. He had been living under the yoke of a faith he never chose for himself long enough, and for nothing—

 _“He would deny you Mitani’s embrace, his touch, his adoration—all these things you desire even more than existence itself. And for what? It is called an unnatural love, because its realization can come to nothing. It is called blasphemy to say that such a love can be purer than any base one that leads to reproduction, to the propagation of filth, to animal rutting, though somehow that base one is held in the highest honor, as a sacrament._

 _“See the hypocrisy of men’s religion, Izuru!”_ the devil hissed, the conviction in his words echoing off the dormitory ceiling and ringing in Izuru's ears. _“See the hypocrisy of your almighty god! Decry this folly once and for all, embrace what you know in your heart to be right and good, and I guarantee you, your Mitani will come around to that sense as well. How could he not have even once entertained the thought of following the glorious path of youth, being only a lowly man of sin after all?”_

His body was within reach. Sensing that, Focalor's hunger grew. The beast’s tongue twisted eagerly inside the cage of its maw, slapping the saliva that had begun to pool around it. The boy was so close to accepting him, his scent heady in the creature’s nostrils, his soul just beyond his grasp.

 _“Let us help each other,”_ Focalor said. _“Say you wish to close this deal and your will shall be done. Mitani will be yours and yours alone. All I ask in return is that you do not forget your servant, and let him use this mortal body when you have passed, though far away that day may be. What harm could there be in merely recycling this mortal vessel, when you no longer have use of it? Surely you must see what a small, insignificant price it is to pay for how much you will gain. What say you?”_

There could only be one answer, but he had to hear it. For his own sake, and for the bargain to be binding, he needed to hear the words. _“Tell me what you want, Izuru.”_

“I want him . . .” God, but he wanted Mitani, till he thought his heart would burst from wanting.

But it wasn't enough. Stubborn child. _“Then say you accept my terms! Say the words and I will appease your hunger. I will make this agony go away!”_

“Yes . . . do it, please . . .” Izuru moaned beneath him. He twisted in impatience, clawing at the pillow beneath his head.

 _“'Please' what? If you want what I am offering you, boy, then say that you accept!”_

“I accept, I accept!” The words tore themselves from Izuru's throat. “Just please . . . now. . . .”

Satisfied, Focalor wasted no more time. It did not matter to him whether the boy knew what he was saying, or that he was only prompted by the promise of seeing his desire fulfilled. The contract had been signed; it needed only ratification.

The creature’s tongue shot between the teeth that were the bars of its prison, forcing its way through the boy’s parted lips. Izuru gasped at the intrusion. At first, still lost in his lust, the hardness of the muscle, the life that throbbed within it, and the first briny taste that hit his tongue nearly drove him to the climax that had eluded him painfully so far.

In an instant, however, every trace of desire within him was dashed as the thing discharged in him. Every desire, that was, but his body’s to reject the intrusion. He gagged as something warm and viscous filled the back of his throat. He tasted bile and blood that were not his own, and something fouler than the smell of sewage, something that slithered down his windpipe like slimy bits of flesh, alive with a purpose of their own. He wanted to vomit. He longed desperately to breathe, but the tongue pushed farther in, blocking his airflow with its foul ichor. It pumped its contents into him without cessation, the filth filling Izuru's esophagus, filling his lungs. The sharp pain deep in his chest and the dreaded realization that he was falling from that proverbial cliff toward death were the last things Izuru knew before passing into unconsciousness. It could have come sooner, but at least he would remember less of that horrifying pain when he woke than he would a hazy dream.

At last he went still, and silence filled the room. It was a moment more before the creature finished its duty. Hunched tense over the boy’s body, there was something of the detached stare of childbirth in its shadowy silhouette. When the tongue retracted, the angelic light faded from the bulging eyes. Only a dumb, empty look remained in its hideous features—no hint of sentience let alone any mind at all showed in its skeletal grin. If any consciousness remained it was a rudimentary, instinctual one hardwired into the body, into the spinal chord. It was only that that made the creature turn once again to the window, and drag its body through it toward the ocean and the chilly night air, an empty husk.

* * *

Izuru did not attend class the next day.

No one made a fuss about it for much of the morning—after all, it was not unusual for students to skip lectures due to illness or studying for exams, or simply for the hell of it. However, for Izuru, who had never missed a day since the start of the term, this was unusual. At least Mitani thought so.

“Where’s Okazaki?” he asked the class when he failed to see the boy at the beginning of lecture.

Some of the students in the front row shrugged. “I haven’t seen him all day. He never came in.”

“Maybe he got sick.”

“If he was feeling ill,” Mitani said aloud to himself, “he would have gone to the infirmary—”

Fujisawa’s snort startled him. “Yeah, right. Okazaki’s never sick.” Not so hidden behind his careless smile lay his disgust for his classmate, who not only seemed able to get away with anything, but now was actually procuring a professor’s sympathy in doing so. Why such a fuss? As always, he thought, it couldn't be anything serious.

But Mitani appeared to think it was. “Fujisawa,” he said, “will you come with me, please?”

The other started. “What? Why?”

“Since you know Okazaki so well,” Mitani said, much to his chagrin, “I think you should come with me to make sure nothing has happened to him.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Fujisawa muttered under his breath, but he could hear the worry held in close check in his professor’s voice and knew he was serious. Grudgingly, he rose from his seat, and Mitani told the class, “Continue to read from the book while I’m gone. Tanaka will be in charge until I return.” The bespectacled boy sitting next to Fujisawa nodded. To Fujisawa, even he looked annoyed by their professor’s preferential treatment.

They checked with the infirmary first, but Izuru was never there, so Fujisawa took Mitani to the dorms. To say that it was awkward bringing his professor this close to his private life, and to his rival’s, would be an understatement. That, compounded by his outrage over the special treatment Izuru received, served to only darken his mood. He turned away when his teacher knocked and, getting no answer, opened the door.

Mitani put his hand over his mouth. “Oh God—”

Izuru lay on the floor, curled on his side and unconscious, so that at first glance he seemed as still as a corpse. Mitani was beside him the next, turning him over and feeling for a pulse. As he did so, Izuru groaned in his arms.

“What time is it?” he mumbled. “I’m going to be late for Sensei’s class. . . .”

He tried to get up, looking right past Mitani, and Mitani could tell he was still out of it. He shook the boy gently. “It’s okay, Okazaki. That doesn’t matter right now.”

Slowly Izuru's gaze focused on his face. “Sensei?”

“That’s right. Are you all right?”

Izuru nodded and sat up.

But no sooner had he done so than he abruptly pushed himself away from Mitani, turned, and vomited. At least, he tried to. The muscles in his stomach spasmed violently under Mitani's hands as he dry heaved, and that was when Mitani noticed the boy was burning up. His skin felt clammy. His trousers was undone and what few buttons on his shirt he had managed were in the wrong holes. He must have collapsed while getting ready to leave for class, Mitani thought. The window was wide open and the curtains billowed in the cold breeze. No wonder Izuru had a fever. It had probably been open all night.

“Fujisawa,” Mitani said to the boy in the doorway, “call the nurse.”

Fujisawa was livid. Out of all the stunts to pull, making himself ill for attention was by far the lowest. “Come on, you don’t believe he’s— He’s faking it, Sensei!”

To prove him wrong, Izuru doubled over again, this time with a sob of pain. “Just do it!” Mitani said as he held onto him. Glancing up, he saw Fujisawa pale as he stared at Izuru, looking like he was going to be sick himself. “Jesus Christ—” he gasped and hurried from the room.

When Mitani turned back, he saw for himself what had startled Fujisawa. Something like a ragged piece of flesh was lying on the floor where Izuru had spit it out, covered in a thick black bile the consistency of molasses that shone sickly in the light from the window. The way sea cucumbers deflate out of water, that was how it seemed to lie there. In the split second that Mitani was able to study it, he could have sworn it moved by itself, palpitated, like a thing suffering a slow death.

But he had no time to dwell on it as Izuru fainted. In the short time before Mitani glanced back toward the thing, it had disappeared, like water evaporating from a hot stone.

* * *

While he waited for the school nurse to arrive, Mitani carried Izuru to the bed. He felt terribly light to Mitani, who wasn’t sure if it was his illness that made him seem so. But even in his pallor Izuru was beautiful.

Beautiful. That wasn’t a word Mitani had ever expected to use to describe one of his students, but it was what came to mind now as he watched Izuru sleep.

Beautiful in the perfect, aesthetic proportions of his face and figure—beautiful in the sense that the Madonna is beautiful. There was something divine, Mitani thought, in the downward curve of Izuru's mouth, or the way his long eyelashes brushed his skin, and the serene line of his eyebrows gave him the expression of a saint giving blessings. The slight sheen of sweat on his brow matched this image, and it was with a tender reverence that Mitani brushed the damp hair out of his eyes. He felt like a worshiper, unworthy of the sacred ground on which he tread and holding his breath in the anticipation that any moment he would be noticed. He let his gaze travel down Izuru’s body, admiring the curve of his throat, the softness of his torso glimpsed under the hastily buttoned shirt that lingered despite the athletic, masculine lines that had developed.

Of course, Mitani reminded himself, he’s seventeen. Maybe it didn't feel like so long since he had been that age himself, though it was long enough to regret what he had—or hadn’t—been then. He felt a pang of jealousy looking at Izuru in this new light, but with it a pang of something else that was at the same time much more pleasant and painful. He denied that it was physical attraction, but he couldn’t deny his curiosity, which he passed off as being in a scientific vein. Just as some are drawn to machines for the beautiful symbiosis of their various working parts, so could he appreciate the different features, lovely in their own right, that made up this one perfect body. In his mind, there was a hierarchy of temptation in which some kinds of curiosity were purer than others. And it was, after all, mere curiosity that drew his eyes down to Izuru’s navel, which rose with each steady breath between the tails of his shirt, and toward his narrow hips, and the lines that disappeared under the waistband of his slacks. . . .

If it was mere curiosity, then why did he suddenly feel like he had caught Izuru’s fever?

“Sensei?”

Mitani started. He looked up to see Izuru watching him with half-open eyes. There was a bold intimacy in them Mitani had never received from the boy before. He had to remind himself it was a rather intimate thing he had witnessed.

But how long had Izuru been watching him? The heat rose to Mitani's cheeks, and he felt like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, averting his eyes as Izuru began to fix his appearance.

“Better. Thank you.” Izuru managed a small smile. “I’m sorry you had to see that just now. It must have alarmed you.”

“Yes. As a matter of fact it did.”

“Well, it’s nothing to worry about,” Izuru said nonchalantly. “I guess I must have eaten something that disagreed with me.”

That did nothing to reassure Mitani. _Eaten something. . . ._ He thought of that black thing Izuru had spit up. Izuru must not have seen it; he acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Maybe he had been too out of it to notice.

But though he was careful to give no outward indication, Izuru was concerned, if not so much for his health as for his sanity. He knew there was something wrong when he actually wanted to pass out again. Strange and horrible images flooded his mind even now in the light, with his eyes wide open: images of a winged, serpentine creature with a death’s-head, birdcage grin and eyes like mirrors he could see himself reflected in. But along with a trace, incongruous, and somewhat embarrassing memory of physical ecstasy, that was all it was: a trace. An image. Why it bothered him so he could not say. It was obviously only a very strange dream.

However, rather than ease his mind, he suspected that if he confided in Mitani what had happened—what he remembered happening—he would only feel worse. It felt like something had an actual hold on his tongue when he tried. So it was with some effort that he forced a smile for his teacher. Though his whole body was exhausted, he felt at the same time physically stronger than any time he could remember. Mentally, however, he did not feel better at all.

And somehow—though it seemed against his will—even that feeling was passing quickly like his upset stomach.

“I had Fujisawa call the nurse,” Mitani said. “He should be here any minute—”

“Fujisawa was here?” Izuru grimaced. If there was one embarrassment he could have done without. . . .

“He told me you never got sick. I was afraid something terrible might have happened to you.”

“Sensei. . . .” Touched by his professor’s concern and ashamed he could not voice his own, Izuru averted his eyes. “That was kind of you,” he said after a moment, “but I’m sorry to cause you so much trouble. I’m . . . I'm sorry I missed class.”

“Please, Okazaki, don’t apologize for something you couldn’t control. Anyway, you have nothing to worry about because I canceled my lecture this morning.”

The elation Izuru had felt just hearing his teacher say his name so tenderly suddenly gave way to an irrational fear. His heartbeat quickened. “You canceled because of me? Why?”

The turnaround startled Mitani. Shouldn’t Izuru have been relieved?

A knock on the door kept him from having to reply. The school nurse entered with an awkward, disarming smile, and Mitani related to him what happened and how he had found Izuru.

Izuru already had the diagnosis and cure down for him. “It’s a stomach flu. I ate something that disagreed with me, is all. I’ll sleep it off.”

“You’re probably right,” the nurse said. “Still, I’ll have to take a look at you to make sure. Then I can give you something to take for—”

“No!” Izuru interjected. Even he was surprised by the deep-seated anxiety in his voice; he did not know where that came from. Calming himself, he amended: “I don’t want any medicine. I’ve already got it out of my system. I’ll just take it easy tonight and it’ll go away in a day by itself. It always does.”

He looked at Mitani, and Mitani would have been able to say with certainty this time that something had changed in his gaze. Holding it, Izuru said, with a fondness that sent a shiver down his professor's spine, “Anyway, I already feel better now that Sensei is here.”

Mitani waited outside in the hall while the nurse conducted his examination. The man was out in a short while, greeting Mitani with a shrug. “Okazaki will be fine,” he said. “It doesn’t appear to be anything serious. He isn’t even running a temperature. It was probably just a mild case of dehydration or food poisoning, like he said.”

“Food poisoning.” Mitani nodded to himself. His thoughts drifted to the thing Izuru had spit up, which had worried him so much with its macabre appearance, but even his memory of it was growing more and more vague by the minute. If he told the nurse what he had seen, with no hard evidence to prove his story, the man might think he was delusional. “But the window was open all night,” he said quietly instead. “He was burning up—”

“The stress it puts on the body often makes it seem like a person is running a fever,” said the nurse. “He doesn't have pneumonia, if that’s what you're suggesting.”

“Thank you,” was all Mitani could say. So, he had nothing to worry about, he told himself. But that was easier said than believed.

* * *

As he had predicted, Izuru was back to normal by dinner that night. If anything, he felt even stronger than before. His cheerful mood bordered on out-of-character, and the unusual bounce in his step did little to assuage the speculation that circulated around his brief and mysterious bout with illness.

“Stay away from me!” Fujisawa jumped to his feet when Izuru approached his table, covering his mouth and nose; and for a moment Izuru thought his classmate was accusing him of committing some grave sin. “You have some nerve to show up here,” Fujisawa said, indicating the dining hall with his eyes, “after what happened. But you're not giving me your sickness.”

At those words, immediately the first-years who sat around him copied his gesture.

“It isn’t contagious,” Izuru said. “Anyway, I’m better now.”

“After one day—no, not even that—a couple hours?” His classmate’s voice was muffled behind his hand. “I don’t believe it. You shouldn’t even be able to leave your room. Unless, of course, you were faking in all along.” A sinister grin appeared in his eyes.

“I wasn’t faking. You were there—”

“Yeah,” Fujisawa lowered his voice, “I was there. I saw that . . . _thing_ you hacked up. . . .”

“Your sympathy is touching, Fujisawa.”

“Why would I sympathize with you, Okazaki? This is self-preservation, plain and simple; you know that. I don’t want to catch anything like that from you is all . . . not even if it is for Sensei’s attention.”

The last words had been spoken low enough for only the two of them to hear, but Izuru felt himself rise to anger nonetheless. He tried not to show it in front of the other students. Even though his assumption was incorrect, still there was no way Fujisawa could have known. . . .

The vice-president snickered behind his makeshift mask. “What, Izuru? Speechless? I must have hit a nerve.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Izuru said.

“Hm.” In his characteristic way, Fujisawa’s amusement turned instantly to a frown as he looked down his nose at his classmate. “I said, get away!” he barked, pointing his other hand away from him and the first-year table. It seemed to Izuru like he believed himself to be exorcising a malevolent spirit. For some reason, the thought gave him an inexplicable thrill in the pit of his stomach.

Perhaps it was only a coincidence—for his gaze remained fixed on Izuru—that Fujisawa’s finger was pointing directly at Mitani.

The young teacher seemed a bit surprised when Izuru approached him. Or maybe it was just that he would do so in a place so crowded with other students. He said amiably enough, “How are you feeling, Okazaki? Your appetite's returning?”

“Yes, thanks to you,” said Izuru. There was a confidence in his smile that had been hiding that day in the square.

Mitani was glad to see it. He took it as a sign of Izuru's returning health, and did not give it a second thought. “I’m glad to hear it. If there’s anything else you ever need, you shouldn’t hesitate to say so.”

So brief was the mischievous flash in Izuru’s eyes that the other missed it.

“If that’s the case,” he said, “maybe I can see you about some advice for preparing for college tomorrow.”

“No need,” said Mitani. He gestured to his half-eaten dinner, adding, “I’m finished here, so I could see you in my office now, if you’ve already eaten.”

Izuru hadn't, but he found he did not have much of an appetite. At least not for food.

The teachers’ room was abandoned at that time of day, so it made for an ideal corner in which the two of them could sit and talk in total privacy. Outside, the dark of a late-autumn afternoon was an impenetrable cold that practically invited the intimacy of this uninhabited room. Mitani pulled some thick books from the shelves that lined the side of the room, and Izuru pulled up a chair. Sitting in such close proximity, hunched over the small pool of lamplight on the desk, he listened to Mitani’s suggestions only half-heartedly. He was paying close attention, but not to those.

Instead Izuru watched the shape of Mitani’s lips as he spoke, his eyes trained on the book in front of him. Every now and then their knees would touch one another. When Mitani was conscious of it, he would withdraw his leg, until he forgot his vigilance and they touched again. How queer the sensation felt, and heavy with meaning, the touch of that man's warm skin and twitching muscles leaning against Izuru's through a barrier of mere cloth. Like how an invisible stray hair can tickle the follicles of the arm as though it were crawling with phantom spiders. How hard and uncomfortable and real was the cheap metal armrest that dug into his thigh in comparison, and the upholstered seat with too little stuffing. With calculated patience, Izuru soaked these feelings in. He leaned in more, feigning sudden interest in the page Mitani had turned to, and was rewarded with a shy chuckle, a subtle cock of the head in the other direction. Izuru smiled. Only a day ago, he might have balked at this evidence that he made his teacher uncomfortable. But the tension that existed between them there, as though contained by that little pool of light, made Izuru's pulse race, and he knew he was not the only one aware of it.

And for the rest of the week, one might have seen out of the corner of his eye—down on the beach, if he braved the weather—the white carcass of a giant fish undulating against the rocks with the flow of the tide, its body bloated and flesh ragged from deterioration and the scavenging of crabs and flies, its lidless eye bursting from its socket and covered by a thick, white film. If it were anything other than a glimpse, one might have thought it was an impossible fish, something that may have existed once but should not have in this geological era, except perhaps in the darkest depths. One more superstitious, one who believed in an actual Hell, might have even thought it cause for alarm.

No one saw it but for a glimpse, however, but Focalor. And Izuru watched the gulls’ strange, disoriented behavior for the second time in such a short period, wondering what had provoked the spike of spiteful satisfaction that arose suddenly within him.

* * *

It was dark in the small room. Hands caressed his face, hands that reached out of the darkness as though bodiless.

But there was a body pressed against him; slowly he deciphered the warmth of another’s naked skin, though the face of the owner remained beyond his field of vision. He tried to find it, but every time he turned to focus on its features, the darkness swallowed it up, like a reflection in warped glass. The other knew his frustration and laughed—a rich laugh that was at once condescending and playful and desirous, and without any doubt the laugh of a young man.

His heart leaped at the revelation. These hands, this body that touched him was a thing forbidden by his upbringing and his higher sensibilities, something worthy of rebuke and disgust; and yet he found his own temperature rising at the simple recognition of the muscles of a leg tensing against his; the fingers that brushed shyly against his lips produced the sensation of butterflies in his stomach, and the unmistakable tension of sexual arousal. It defied what he knew in his heart should be, but the truth remained that this profane experience felt no less sacred than that elation he found in mass. . . .

It was impossible to tell which way was up. He was left powerless by his inability to see his elusive seducer, yet the other could lay kisses on his lips and touch the lower regions of his body unbidden. Something about the stranger’s manner was familiar to him. Who are you? he longed to ask, but did not dare speak the words. I know I know you, but why must you keep escaping me? He had the vivid knowledge of touching the soft, hot skin of the inside of a thigh and the mouth covering his broke away in a gasp. “Sensei,” the stranger whispered against his lips.

Then he knew. It was Izuru. He had one brief glimpse of Izuru’s countenance before him before the abrupt end—his eyes downcast and saintly as they had been that afternoon surrounded by a faint sheen of sweat, the pupils dilated beneath his long eyelashes with lust. . . .

Mitani awoke with those images, those feelings fresh and uncompleted in his mind. The sound of the dream Izuru’s breath continued to echo in his head, tormenting him with sinful promises so that he couldn’t help but play them over in his imagination as he prepared for the day. He felt unclean, but there was no time to shower, and he knew that if he did his arousal would only return two-fold. Just that knowledge shamed him. It was the thought of seeing Izuru in class, of layering the lies of his dream upon that innocent person, that disgusted him the most. He was determined to rid himself of its memory before the first bell.

It was early in the morning and the sun had not yet risen when Mitani went to the chapel. Father Robert looked up immediately from lighting the candles in the alcove in preparation for that morning’s mass. Mitani’s footsteps carried in the sparsely-furnished, stone-walled building—betraying his guilty conscience, he feared; but that was, after all, why he had come. “Sorry to bother you like this, Father,” he said, “but would you hear my confession? It’s been two days since the last one, but I felt I should come right away.”

He lowered his voice, afraid it too might echo among the images of the saints, and carry his words to Heaven. He preferred to keep them on Earth a while longer. “I need your guidance, Father.”

“I can see that. You don’t look well, Professor.”

“I don’t feel well. I have something I need to get off my chest. It feels like I'm being suffocated by it. You’re the only person I can talk to about this.”

“That is what I’m here for,” the priest said, and gestured for Mitani to take a seat in one of the pews. “What is it that has been bothering you so terribly?”

He felt again like he had as a young boy, being swallowed up by the grandness of the church as he confessed his sins to a face that never varied from its stern, unyielding look. Father Robert’s face this morning was no different from that hazy memory of a priest from his childhood, and unconsciously Mitani drew himself closer as he sat beneath it. He willed his heart to slow as he gathered the courage to speak what was in it. His hand was shaking for fear of what Father Robert might say. But he was more afraid, he reminded himself, of the consequences should he let his sin go unconfessed.

He lowered his head and let the words come. “I had . . . sinful thoughts, Father. About a student.”

“'Sinful' covers a lot of meanings, Professor. Were they of a violent nature?”

“No.” Mitani sighed deeply in something like relief. “No, nothing like that, thank God.”

“It’s not unusual for a teacher to sometimes harbor some resentment toward a student,” Father Robert went on without missing a beat. “Sometimes they unconsciously act out some hard feelings carried over from their own youth that something in this generation brings to the surface. Someone reminds them of a rival from long ago. I’m sure everyone here has confessed something like that to me at least once. It’s nothing to get worked up over. Pray to God to help you through these struggles, and surely you will be forgiven.”

But Mitani shook his head. The priest’s blindness frustrated him. It only made it harder to say what he had to. “It isn’t that at all, Father. But I fear in the eyes of the Church it may be just as bad as if I had actually struck that person. My thoughts . . . they were sexual in nature.”

The silence that followed was so brutal in its totality, Mitani could not bear it.

“Father?” he ventured.

“You had impure thoughts about one of our boys?”

Startled by the hard edge in the priest’s tone of voice, the tenuous restraint, Mitani looked up. “Yes,” he admitted.

“For how long?”

“It was just early this morning, in a dream. But it was so vivid it left me thinking, maybe I’d had them longer and just hadn’t realized it.” There had to be some hope found in honesty, in remorse. Though sitting under that hardened, judgmental gaze, like the gaze of a statue of a saint captured in the warped mirror of a childhood memory, made him want to stop, he pressed on, believing it for the best. “I know it was wrong. I feel . . . I feel like I’ve betrayed my purpose here, and that person, even though I don’t know why I had those thoughts. That’s why I came to you with repentance in my heart.”

“Wrong,” said the priest, “is not the half of it. What you speak of is not natural. It is an abomination, an affront against God and all that He has created. You're right to be ashamed. Have we not been taught that men who commit such acts with other men, they ‘received in their own persons the due penalty of their error'?”

“Yes. I know what the Bible says of homosexual behavior. But I didn’t _do_ anything, Father.” Mitani made a small gesture of futility. “I merely ask forgiveness for my thoughts.”

“It makes no difference whether it is the mind or the body that sins.” The indignant passion of his homilies had begun to slip into the priest's manner, as though what Mitani told him shook his soul more than any sin committed by the students. As though it were he Mitani had trespassed against personally. “Christ said that if a man merely thinks about committing adultery, it is as if he has committed the act for real in his heart.”

“Even if it is only a dream?” Mitani tried. “A dream isn’t something a person has control over. Is it? Isn’t it just something irrational, some random images put together from the events of that day?”

“Which is even worse. Dreams are things that are formed out of our deepest desires. Out of the things we dwell on in our unconscious thoughts.”

“I suppose when the angels appeared to the prophets in their dreams, that was genuine,” Mitani corrected himself.

“The same could be said of devils.”

Mitani groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Father, what am I supposed to do? Please tell me. I feel so lost. I don’t know where to begin to find a solution to this problem.”

“This isn’t something you can just make disappear with a magic word,” said the priest. It seemed nothing Mitani said could diminish his disgust, no matter how sincere the young professor's contrition. “You were invited here to act as a moral guide for your students, among other things. They were put in your care, under a great deal of trust. Are you aware of the stain you have put on this institution and all that someone in your position is supposed to stand for? What a disappointment this is? To me?”

“Of course, I am!” Mitani said in a burst of frustration. “That’s the worst part of it. Even if no one else is directly affected, I am still dirtied by it. It’s like I have blood caked under my nails, and nothing I can do will wash it away. Don’t you think I want with all my soul for that feeling to stop?”

Father Robert just shook his head slowly.

“Please, Father.” Mitani bowed his head again, pressing his folded hands to his brow. “Can’t you see that I’m penitent? I know my thoughts were misguided, but it isn’t as though I’ve killed or robbed anyone.”

“You betrayed that person and this institution, as you said.”

Father Robert did not need to say anything more. As they both knew, the coldest, innermost circle of Hell was reserved for traitors.

Slowly, Mitani let his shoulders fall. The revulsion and panic of that morning had largely evaporated, leaving in its place a numbness and disparaging unease even heavier. A revelation that even with the absolution of confession, the sin of his dream could not simply be removed like a stain. I could work hard, he thought, to change my heart. If those feelings are truly unnatural and unnecessary, it is possible they could be simply an illusion of the idle brain. The pleasure they conjured was nothing but a sign of decadence. They could be erased. With the proper discipline, they could be erased. Or at very least, replaced. That was something Mitani could settle for. If he only knew the way.

“Please,” he said again, unable to raise his voice above a whisper. “There must be something I can do.”

* * *

But one can’t always help the way his thoughts drift. Though in the novel, Berengar flogged himself for his sinful deeds and thoughts, still he could not rid himself of them, for they were a kind of addiction.

Mitani would not go so far as to say he had an addiction himself. However, he might admit that he held inside his self a curiosity about Izuru that would not simply go away with prayer or self-denial, or any naive attempt to consciously steer his mind to another course. It was not a pure curiosity, no matter how earnestly he wished it to be. It was for that reason that he felt himself in the constant torment of guilt, like an affliction. In this world of Saint Michel’s in which he had been indoctrinated, like that fictional mountain monastery, it seemed the way of women was something forbidden, their bodies held as instruments of the devil that made young men stray from their entrance exam studies. But if that were so, the way of youth, almost revered for its danger in the times of the shogunate, was infinitely more shameful and unnatural. “Those sins that are against nature,” St Augustine had written, “like those of the men of Sodom, are in all times and places to be detested and punished. Even if all nations committed such sins, they should all alike be held guilty by God’s law which did not make men that they should use each other thus. The friendship which should be between God and us is violated when that nature—whose author he is—is polluted by so perverted a lust.”

And yet Mitani could not help asking, as he steadily grew used to the thoughts that pervaded his mind, why if thoughts like his were against nature, if they came to nothing, why then did people have them? No matter how thoroughly the works of theology he had read strove to answer that question, and no matter how solid their logic, still that one doubt nagged constantly at his heart.

Did it bother Fujisawa as well, or was it the thought of sin that only egged him on, like it does so many of the young and disillusioned? While Mitani was reviling his body for its desires, was Fujisawa not praising it and feeding it? Perhaps it is the invincibility of youth that makes one do reckless things in adolescence—not a thought for consequences of the future entering the mind because it is unable to perceive the very idea of a future.

There was nothing sinful about two people coming together to satisfy their needs. Embracing the assistant librarian in the back room, the musky scent of feminine desire as she moved with him mingling with the musty scent of old binding, her arms and legs wrapped around his back awkwardly in their raw and momentary desperation, their only fear was that they might be caught by the head librarian returning early from his break. The first-year who had seemed in awe of the rumors surrounding the vice-president, who held back his cries at the discomfort of Fujisawa inside his inexperienced body, had nothing innocent in his soul to protect, let alone that he wanted to protect.

If he had any second thoughts about what his curiosity had gotten him into, they were not immediate enough to overcome his almost reverent fear of Fujisawa’s office; and the young woman, though more than three years his senior, her dark eyes closed in ecstasy behind her dark-framed glasses, cared much less for his office than for the satisfaction of having been loved by a youth of his looks and charm for just a few minutes.

When all was said and done, and the mind reeled in the afterglow of having reached something close to holy for a few transient seconds, what did it matter to him if he lay spent beside a boy or a girl? Either way, he was convinced, there was no salvation for his generation.


	3. Chapter 3

The winter holiday arrived almost before Izuru knew it. Though the palpable excitement of the other students making plans or tossing about feminine names, and the songs they sang in mass appropriate to the various days of Advent clearly indicated its approach, it still felt as though it had sneaked up on Izuru. It wasn’t until Fujisawa mentioned that his father was sending him to Tokyo for the break that he was forced to think about his own plans.

“We’re going skiing in the Skidome, and afterward I plan on having steak at the most expensive restaurant I can find. My cousin’s coming over from Texas, and she hardly speaks a word of Japanese, but I don't really care 'cause she's stacked out to here. . . .” When he got no response, he leaned over, a nosy look on his face, exposing the pretextual nature that information had carried all along. “What are you doing for the holiday?”

Izuru had hardly allowed it to cross his mind, as doing so would do nothing to cheer him up like it did the other students; and when he did remember the bland week and a half that always lay before him this time of year, it was not without some amount of jealousy for his classmate.

“Just going home.” He shrugged. There was really nothing more to say than that.

“Sorry to hear that.” Fujisawa chuckled lightly, making it clear he was really quite pleased. He had hard candy in his mouth, and the way he rolled it about on his tongue, making it click against his teeth, seemed a mocking gesture. “I’m glad I’m not you, Okazaki,” he purred, “or I think I might cut my stomach just to add some color to my life.”

Saint Michel’s winter holiday differed from the schedules of the local public high schools. As it was a Christian institution, they went on break several days before other schools so that students would be able to celebrate Christmas with their family or friends. But as it approached, Izuru anticipated it with as much excitement as every year, which was far below the level one might consider normal and healthy for a boy his age. He had long felt distanced from his family, into whose priorities he never figured particularly highly; and since they had enrolled him in Saint Michel, the distance had only grown. Convincing himself that the tuition alone proved they loved him was just an easy way to keep from dwelling. This winter holiday, like all the others, he suspected, would be awkward and mind-numbingly boring.

The Okazaki home was one of perpetual silence. His father being a corporate attorney, he had been little more than a phantom in Izuru’s childhood who returned late at night and disappeared behind a newspaper in the morning. However, it probably would have made little difference what he did for a profession. His voice was all that remained a constant, and he never caught it delving into topics of the subjective or the familiar. Business was all that seemed to interest him. It often drove him to America or Europe, places only recognized by the expensive steins and highly polished cross-sections of wood turned into clocks that sat lifeless on the shelf, or fancy chocolates and pressed cookies that inadequately filled the hole left by his absence.

On the other hand, though these things could not talk, at least they did not have the potential to waste to begin with. The most sentimental thing his father had ever said to him was that he hoped one day his son would become a leader, like the president of a company, and hire someone like his father to represent him. “And buy his parents a penthouse condominium in Shibuya,” his grandmother had leaned over and whispered to Izuru sarcastically. At the time, he had laughed off her bitterness; but something about the diplomatic life of a boarding school student had made him appreciate such unapologetic rancor a bit more in recent months.

His mother dealt in kimono. She dressed in business suits and thick makeup like an office lady and was always complaining about this or that fashion that was in style among the young people, when she wasn’t fitting clients or away on buying trips. A day after Izuru returned home, she dragged him out with her to go shopping for Christmas and New Year's eves, saying in a tone that almost sounded genuine that she wanted to spend time with the son she barely got to see. It made him wonder in passing if it somehow had not occurred to her that it was because she and his father had sent him off to a boarding school in order to keep him on track to becoming that company president of their dreams that he was away for so long. She managed to ask the obligatory questions about his health and grades before slipping mindlessly again into gossip about people and fabrics he did not know nor cared to. He looked in the rear view mirror at the driver of the taxi, half hoping the man would recognize his silent plea for help, but he never once glanced in their direction.

“I’m sorry, Izuru,” his mother said when she finally noticed his attention drifting. “I’m boring you, aren’t I? Well, we just have to check on some designs that were supposed to be finished and pick up a few last minute things for the Christmas party. It shouldn’t take long, and then I’ll take you somewhere to eat and we’ll go home.”

Izuru grimaced. “You’re having a party this year?”

“It’s at the house of an associate of your father’s, actually,” she told him. He was seventeen, but she still spoke to him as though he were seven. “Some important individuals will be there and a couple of them happen to be my clients. Not that kimono is something people often wear to a Christmas party. Don’t worry,” she said when she saw his look, “we won't force you to come with us.”

Izuru had no doubt he would not have been able to go even if he wanted to.

He glanced at the time on the dashboard. “It’s already past one.”

“Is it?” His mother looked skeptically at her watch. “How did that happen?” she said, but did not sound at all contrite. “I can make it quick if you’re really hungry—”

“I’ll just get something myself.” The prospect of sitting in an overstuffed chair in the corner surrounded by gaudy fabrics and even gaudier women for more than an hour—as he knew it would be—was not at all appealing.

When the cab came to a stop outside her shop, they split ways, agreeing to meet up in an hour and a half. The restaurants on this street were all posh and pretentious, either expensive traditional eateries or dark European-inspired cafes. Instead Izuru took a bus to the department stores, where the food courts were packed with people shopping for Christmas and the New Year. People speaking Japanese or something else, so loudly he could barely hear the latest holiday ballads playing over the loudspeaker, let alone his own thoughts. The crowd made him feel better, as did the cheap, greasy food. Sitting at an equally cheap table, pressed nearly shoulder to shoulder with shoppers, he had the sudden desire to turn to stone and stay like this forever, surrounded by people who were too busy bustling about like bees for the sake of some loved one or other to notice him: a sibling or child, an old teacher that had once been helpful, someone at the office they sang karaoke with occasionally, or simply a boyfriend or girlfriend.

A plethora of signs advertising special sales indicated as clear as anything else the approaching end of the year. But in case one needed extra convincing, snow _daruma_ decorated the window display here, a plump inflatable Santa there. The white flakes of fiberglass that surrounded them were all one would see of snow around here. Izuru pretended to look at new books and CDs that had been spread out on the tables, but all the faces on their covers blurred into one and he would not remember any of the names. He stopped by a display of quality confections and alcohol, and on a whim bought a jar of caviar, not even sure if he would eat it but eager to rid himself of the money his mother had pushed into his hand when they parted ways. It weighed down his jacket pocket on the ride back to her shop.

Izuru never considered himself especially spiritual, though he had no choice but to be religious; but there was something about the commercialization of the holiday that bothered him—about the images of Christmas being twisted into some generic, capitalist, romantic event so that it might fit everyone's sensibilities. It was disingenuous.

Strange, but he would not have felt that way a year ago. He would not have cared.

His mother had laughed when he asked, regarding the party, if she and his father weren’t going to Christmas mass. “Oh, Izuru,” she had said fondly, “you’re becoming quite the Christian.” Like he was a puppy performing a cute trick. That was how seriously she considered his question. They weren’t really Christians, his parents, at least no more than what was convenient. She wore a silver crucifix pendant at the hollow of her throat, but there was nothing one would recognize as being particularly Catholic behind it. She ridiculed in front of him the portraits of Jesus and Mary Izuru's grandmother kept in a place of reverence on her dresser, their hearts magically exposed and radiating holy light—these few pure memories he had from his childhood of what it was like to have real faith—as something superstitious and outdated.

Was it any wonder he could not bring himself to look forward to returning home, and lay as though dead for long hours in his room simply wondering what he was doing there at all?

In part, it was the girl who would be waiting for Izuru that made him dread the holiday. He had not been fully aware of how deep his dread went until he saw her again.

Kiyo was a freshman at college now, two years his senior, but once they had walked to school together. Their friendship had become one for special occasions when her parents sent her to a Christian girls’ high school, and withered accordingly; and Izuru still blamed them for brainwashing his own folks on the Saint Michel idea. But the image of her in her black pleated skirt, her hair in two braids that sat heavy and immobile like black snakes on either shoulder, was what still came to his mind when he thought of seeing her again. Though it had never been an image to excite him, unlike the time she had caught him staring at her breasts, it loomed before him now like a premonition of death.

Kiyo called to ask him if he wanted to go out with her on Christmas Eve. Nothing made Izuru more uncomfortable, more aware of his isolation than seeing happy couples their age strolling around town, wrapped in their wool coats, effortlessly living up to their obligations to be sickeningly happy on this night in particular. What made her think he would enjoy being one of them? He expressed his surprise in a somewhat cruel manner that she didn’t have a boyfriend now that she was at the university. She clammed up, and Izuru regretted asking. Her silence made him wonder if he might have caused her to foster those kinds of feelings for him without being aware of it, and he came down with a sudden feeling of claustrophobia. He was tempted to say he had a stomach ache and couldn't go out; it would not have been a total fabrication.

He accepted anyway.

They held hands as they strolled past the window displays of posh shops, past bars where the sounds of people singing karaoke to popular holiday songs could be heard briefly when a patron left. Was this supposed to be romantic? Walking the streets with this girl whom, he now realized with relief, he had never thought of as much more than a big sister? If he were to suddenly turn to her and say, “What do you think, _Nee-chan_?” would she suddenly act distant or laugh it off as a jest? He did not know where this sadistic urge to try came from. He had never resented Kiyo. But then again, it was not she that upset him. It was a cruel and asexual farce, their date, two people stumbling through the steps of a dance they had seen others perform; they were nothing more than actors—though perhaps Kiyo had not yet noticed it—and poor ones at that. If only his professor could see them like this, with their shy smiles and awkwardly clasped hands. . . .

Indeed, it was Mitani he blamed for his agony that night. Every now and then Izuru’s thoughts would drift to him while Kiyo talked, and he would have to shake himself to find he had not heard a single word she had said. She might as well have been speaking into a vacuum.

No presents were exchanged. They both went home early.

That was the observation his parents made, their tones rising as they prepared to go out, as though it were abnormal for him not to be out sleeping with that good Christian girl who made her parents so proud. As though if he did, some of her filial piety might rub off on him. Of course, they would never have admitted to harboring those thoughts, but Izuru knew they thought them nonetheless.

He ignored them. He shut himself in his room and threw himself face-down on the bed. He inhaled the scent of detergent that clung to the quilt. He could not have expected to smell Mitani in it, but it disappointed him nonetheless that he did not. And he slowly became aroused, for no reason but that that man was absent. It felt like punishment—for his desires, perhaps, which, in contrast to those other young couples Kiyo had gazed at enviously, were not the norm. He tightened his fists in the comforter to keep them from moving down.

He had never wanted to return to school so badly before, but it was Mitani more than anything that compelled his need to do so. And it was need that plagued him, though different from before. Since that day he had unexpectedly fallen ill, his teacher had become less of a distant dream and more of a very real necessity. He had to be near Mitani, because that was the only way he knew of to soothe his ache, even if in doing so their proximity would only aggravate the already insufferable hunger inside him. It stood to reason that there was only one way ultimately to cure that ailment.

The school felt abandoned when Izuru returned to it by taxi on 28 December, hung about with the somber air of a deserted fortress. The sharp Gothic edges of the chapel and halls were stark and gray against the clear winter sky and chilly sea air, even the palms and evergreens drained of their color; and seagulls played on the cobblestones with a brashness and intelligence they never exhibited when students walked these courtyards in greater numbers, watching Izuru as though he were a phantom crossing over from the other side.

That was not to say the school was empty, however. There would be some third-years using the opportunity to study for college entrance exams, some for whom it was difficult to visit family members, and some like Izuru who were happier away from home. But Izuru did not expect to spend much time with them at all.

Mitani was spending his holiday at school, as well. He had no children, never mentioned a girlfriend, and whether he was on similar terms with his family—or even had one to speak of—he never said, but it was apparent that he was alone. In that way he and Izuru were two of a kind.

He was surprised when Izuru appeared outside his apartment three days before the new year. For some reason his smile fell when Izuru told him he had returned to escape the awkwardness and boredom of home. Had Izuru been mistaken in his decision to return so soon? Had he intruded on his professor's sacred solitude? With a man like Mitani, Izuru felt he could never be sure, and he was struck by a pang of guilt—a strange, uncharacteristic sense of not belonging, such as a person might feel at a hermit’s doorstep, eager though he was to accept when Mitani invited him inside for a cup of tea.

Izuru’s doubts were assuaged, however, when Mitani unexpectedly asked him if Izuru would like to accompany him on his trip to Unzen the next day. He had planned the trip months ago and had not expected to take anyone with him, but he said he couldn’t bear the thought of Izuru staying at the school with no one to talk to and nothing to do without at least extending the invitation.

And since there was nothing else to occupy him, Izuru agreed. There was more to his quick acceptance than that, of course, reasons he could not very well voice. Mitani had reservations for a night at a traditional-style inn in the mountains. Just the thought of sleeping in the same vicinity as his teacher made Izuru’s heart leap with anticipation.

Something nagged at his mind as well, like an angel tapping him on the head—whispering into the back of his brain, _This is your chance_ —and he determined that no amount of ingrained graciousness would allow him to refuse the offer a second longer.

* * *

The bus rocked jerkily as it went up the mountain roads; and though the seats were far from full, the air was filled with the stifled coughs and rustling of other passengers, of college students laughing a little too loudly, of mothers murmuring to one another as their children twisted and writhed in boredom. Izuru and Mitani had nothing to say to one another, as though embarrassed into silence by the mundaneness of those around them, though no one so much as once turned a judging eye in their direction. Izuru watched the landscape go by outside the window, that already faded and bleak in winter became progressively more desolate the higher in elevation they went. Beside him, Mitani had become engrossed in a book. It made Izuru feel alone.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to read when you have company?” he said in jest and snatched the book away, saving the page with his finger. Ignoring Mitani’s surprise and his own rudeness, he asked, “What are you reading anyway?”

“It’s about Unzen. . . .” Mitani began, embarrassed.

“Oh?”

It was one of those moments when Izuru heard him speak the name, mumbled though it was, at the same moment he caught sight of it on the paper. He skimmed the page with his eyes; but then he stopped and actually read the words, and sobered. “The next day the torture began in the following way,” it ran;

One by one the seven were taken apart from the surrounding people, brought to the edge of the seething lake and shown the boiling water casting its spray high into the air—and they were urged to abandon the teaching of Christ or else they would experience in their bodies the terrible pain of the boiling water which lay before them. The cold weather made the steam rising from the bubbling lake look terrible indeed, and the very sight of it would make a strong man faint, were it not for the grace of God. But everyone of them, strengthened by God’s grace, showed remarkable courage and even asked to be tortured, firmly declaring they would never abandon their holy faith.

As he read this last line in particular, Izuru could not help but hear the words as they might have been spoken in his teacher’s voice. Beside him, Mitani was looking down at his hands, silent, and Izuru could only utter an awkward, “Sorry,” and hand the book back. He chastised himself for looking forward to their trip with such selfish intentions in his heart. Hadn’t he known the history of Unzen already? But it had become insignificant next to the thrill of simply being with Mitani that had implanted itself in his mind.

Yet even when they arrived, Izuru could not change his attitude to match Mitani’s more serious mood. He could not grasp that meaning or that sensation that he thought Mitani wanted him to grasp in this place. The valleys that awaited them that had been so often compared to Christian and Buddhist hells alike struck him as no more than the end result of volcanic activity. When the mist finally cleared and the blue sky came out, even though it was the coldest part of winter, the bleakness of the landscape did have a certain brightness to it. It did take some effort to see Unzen as both the hot springs and geysers that attracted so many tourists and the historical site his teacher valued at the same time. Izuru could tell himself that actual people, men and women and children, Japanese with whom he shared his faith had been punished here by other Japanese for simply believing in a salvation through Christ; but grasping the tragedy of it, and the strength of the martyrs' determination to hold strong in their faith, was more difficult.

Mitani, for all the spontaneous, mirth-filled lectures Izuru had come to expect from him on campus, was silent. Was it the reverence of a pilgrim at a martyr’s shrine, Izuru could not help but wonder, as he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and shivered; or was it some other source of guilt, unconnected and unexplained, that seemed to haunt his teacher so?

One would not have been able to tell by looking at it these days that the springs had even been a place of persecution—that there had been a time when that boiling water had been slowly ladled onto people’s bodies to make them apostatize. The steam that obscured the split crags and the water was an iron eliminating any traces of that long-ago habitation, the only sign of human interference being the clay vents in the ground put in place to keep the mountain from erupting. The scraggly pines, half dead from noxious gases, were like phantoms, relics of an age that had lost its relevance.

Families snapped photographs. Vendors sold corn on the cob and eggs boiled in the hot springs, and the sulfur that smelled like rotten eggs itself somehow made those items the sweetest Izuru had ever tasted. As he and Mitani sat together over their packed lunches, which now seemed second-rate in comparison, they talked as if they were in a place with a more cheerful history, with no mention of martyrs and apostates at all.

Not for the first time did Izuru experience that elusive, short-lived feeling of being old friends, the two of them, equals instead of teacher and student, so that, laughing, he corrected after Mitani said his name: “It’s Izuru.”

“Hm?”

“You should call me Izuru. Don’t call me Okazaki anymore. We’re friends, aren’t we, Sensei?”

Mitani smiled uncertainly. “All right,” he said, “but if that’s to be the case then you have to start calling me Mitani. At least outside the classroom.”

Izuru blushed. “Yes, Mitani . . . -sensei,” he could not help but add. It didn’t sound right without it. And Mitani laughed at him, after which Izuru could not tell if he had been truly serious at all.

That little burst of good humor must have had some effect on his teacher, however, because when they visited the museum afterwards, Mitani treated the displays of religious artifacts and instruments of torture, of photographs of the ‘91 eruption and Christian and Buddhist donations and captions, as any teacher would, with an awe more intellectual in nature, with the full distance of time. The way he spoke, as they stood close to one another in the small building that was little more than a converted station house, it was as though the entire class was there with them, yet his tone was as personal as if his hand were on Izuru’s shoulder instead of clasped in the other behind his back.

“During the seventeenth century, when the persecution of Japanese Christians and missionaries was at its worst, and for a long time after, some of the communities went underground rather than face the officials and torture, and they disguised the outward signs of their faith with Buddhist images. They still prayed to Christ and Mary in private—it was not as though they had truly abandoned their faith. They just pretended not to believe. It was better to lie, they decided, and survive than to die in vain for their convictions.

“But they couldn’t trust people on the outside the same way ever again, so they secluded themselves from the rest of Japan. Their descendants are the _kakure_ , the hidden, and in some places they still guard their faith as though expecting someone to come and steal it away from them. They don’t agree that the faith of the Meiji period evangelists was the same as the pure faith of the seventeenth century. I hear a lot of people say that mainstream Christianity has become too complacent with no one to challenge it. On the other hand, the _kakure_ are criticized for allowing Buddhism to corrupt their traditions too much—people say they aren’t really Christians. But I wonder if anyone truly has the right to say that.”

This was all familiar to Izuru, who had heard it in school before as it was a part of Nagasaki’s history, albeit a sensitive one the other professors were very loath to bring up.

“Sensei, didn’t Endo Shusaku say Christianity _has_ to adapt in order to survive in Japan? It seems to me that there isn’t so much of a difference between the religions, except in the way they explain themselves. At heart everyone wants the same thing: an end to the suffering of this world.”

“M-m.” Mitani nodded slowly. “ _Lex orandi, lex credendi._ As the people pray, so they believe. I don’t suppose you could argue that the road to the adoration of Mary wasn’t already paved by the adoration of Kannon. What I meant was, it’s the conviction that’s genuine, even if the doctrine is considered heretical. But you’re probably too young to understand what a problem the Catholic identity truly was for previous generations anyway.”

“And you aren’t? You’re not that much older than me.”

Izuru had said that with sarcasm, meant to disguise and convey his hurt at being patronized. But Mitani just looked forward and said, “I guess you're right.”

In one case was a _fumie_ from the period, the image of Jesus Christ carved into a block of wood that the apostates would tread on to prove they had abandoned their faith. It had captured Mitani’s attention, but Izuru did not expect himself to be drawn to it as much as he was. It was the utter sadness the image evoked that grabbed hold of him and kept him staring into the case. The worn, shiny face that had been stepped on by feet both guilty and viscerally grateful, it seemed as if its nebulous features were a direct result of that guilt rather than any physical forces reshaping them, and the sin of apostasy that was transferred to itself—the very manifestation of Christ as he who takes away the infinite sins of the world. The beaten Christ—the ironic savior of Mark—the human Christ who is taken for granted against his will. It was the very image of love, though darkened and sunken by the pressure of so many feet, and of a patience with the failure of the hearts of men so bottomless as to give love in return for hatred and fear.

Izuru was surprised to find himself filled with admiration and reverence for a mere object, for how infinitely more genuine was the face on that _fumie_ than the one on that blank statue that hung above the altar at Saint Michel. _This_ was the pain and the humiliation of the crucifixion; _this_ was the agony of carrying the burden of the sins of an ungrateful mankind on one mortal back. This was real.

He glanced at Mitani out of the corner of his eye only to see another kind of sadness and regret displayed there. The only regret Izuru felt was that he could not quite grasp what his teacher was about, what had brought him to this place with the kind of excitement of a child going to the zoo if only to immerse himself in the guilt and oppression of the past. He wished suddenly that he could share in it.

“Perhaps we need to fall to the very depths of our existence before we can truly deserve to rise again,” Mitani had told them once. Izuru had heard it said before in slightly different words about Japan’s defeat in the war. Now Mitani’s words came back to him with a religious clarity: “Into the gravest of our failures and our sins, and the sins others have committed against us. If we truly wish to achieve what is right, doesn’t it stand to reason that we must first, and intimately, know wrong? Not just recognize it or accept its consequences, but truly _feel_ it, the terrible, unadulterated pain of it, in our very souls.”

That is too difficult a task to be practical, Izuru had thought. He, who had thought himself strong, did not even see the potential to handle that kind of guilt in himself. In his youthful conviction, he identified with the martyrs over the apostates, and was left wondering what about the latter could be found to be so heroic. Nevertheless, what Mitani had said still struck him as a correct theory. It was because the ordinary soul found it too difficult to first fall that there were not more people as genuine as Mitani in the world.

They shared a room that night in the inn nearby where Mitani had a reservation. It was apparently a place catering to Unzen’s pilgrims, and operated under the pretense of offering a little slice of the seventeenth century in everything from its architecture to sleeping arrangements. In the same manner, no one batted an eye when they said they would bring another futon up to the room. Mitani’s nonchalance must have been a part of it, for he acted as though this sort of thing were commonplace, spending the night with a teenage boy, a student, in the mountains over the holiday. Izuru couldn’t help thinking back to a time when it was commonplace for a disciple to stay the night beside his master, and trade intellectual pleasures for sexual ones; and he thought with the blood running hotly to his face that it must have occurred to everyone else as well. Those Edo fantasies that seemed so romantic and justified before in their distance filled him with a sense of shame now that reality so resembled them. In the lee of the religious conviction and drama of the mountain, even if it was centuries past, it felt selfish, even sacrilegious to allow his mind to turn towards depravity; but at the same time the situation left him powerless to stop it.

Izuru went about on pins and needles fixing his bedding in the room they would be sharing while Mitani bathed. His actions were conducted in silence so as to catch the sounds of water from the other side of the door, tormenting him with images of his teacher, wet and flushed from the steam. He didn’t trust himself; it felt like his mind’s control over his body was growing weaker, and at any moment the latter would push open the door as it longed to do, and then . . .

Then what? His own confusion frustrated him. He was serious about his feelings, so why did he lack so much faith in his actions? When his own turn came, it was all Izuru could do not to relieve the longing that the hot water only seemed to worsen. It was almost laughable, he thought, what aroused him. Just the knowledge that Mitani’s naked body had been in this same place and this same water before him was enough to excite him. Izuru grew nervous to think when he finished they would be lying in the same room together all night, listening to each other breathe, and he would as usual find himself unable to do anything about it. When he could put off the inevitable no longer, he splashed himself with cold water again and hoped it might do its trick.

Mitani was asleep when Izuru at last emerged from the bath. Or, at least, he appeared to be. Admittedly, Izuru was glad for it. Turning off the light, he slipped into his own bed and lay on his back, staring up at the light fixture in the center of the ceiling. Tormenting him again were these urges to turn and embrace his teacher, to kiss and touch his body and be touched in return. In the dark, it did seem possible. Even the innocent rustle of the comforter as he moved suggested less innocent causes. He whispered, “Sensei,” but there was no answer, and he could not even hear his teacher’s breathing over the hum of the electric space heater.

That was all Izuru could bring himself to do. Even to turn and sit up to watch his teacher’s sleeping face seemed too bold, and anxiety gripped his heart at the thought that Mitani would wake up and catch him at it, and want to know what he was thinking. “That you fascinate me. That I want you to like me. That I want you to make love to me.” He certainly couldn’t answer this way, although it was the truth. Fearing that, Izuru lay still, his heart beating like a small animal’s.

It was hours before he finally got to sleep, slipping off just as he worried he might be forced to endure the tension all night. Sometime in the early morning hours, he thought he heard Mitani speak to him, but in the morning it seemed like a dream hardly remembered.

He woke feeling unrested, and at breakfast Mitani admitted he hadn’t slept well either, joking that he wasn’t used to sleeping on the floor anymore. Izuru said nothing. His vague sense of shame was enough to make him avoid Mitani’s eyes; but whether it was his salacious thoughts the night before or the possible opportunity revealed only now to have been wasted that he regretted, he could not be sure.

He ended up falling asleep on the bus ride back, making up for the night before. Somehow he found himself leaning against Mitani’s shoulder when he woke, his professor’s arm around his own as he read the book that was in his other hand. Izuru leaned into his warmth, pretending to still be asleep in order to prolong this feeling as much as possible. As long as he was supposed to be out cold it was all right. There was something pure and asexual in Mitani’s gesture that contented Izuru. And he felt guilty again for it, too, because his own intentions had been—and still were—so much the opposite. Once again, he begrudged Mitani this, while at the same time longing both to emulate and corrupt him.

* * *

“Shall I come by tomorrow?” Izuru said when they had returned to Saint Michel. They both agreed that it would not be proper to celebrate New Year’s Eve alone, and Mitani nodded. “I’ll order dinner out,” he said, his generosity bringing a smile to Izuru’s lips that this time was nothing but gracious.

The apartment complex where the professors and staff had their rooms matched the cold Gothic style of the other school buildings on the outside, but inside was simple and modern and comfortable. Stepping into Mitani’s room that evening was like being transported instantaneously to some place far away from the rigid and musty atmosphere of Saint Michel. The smell of take-out sitting and steaming on the kitchenette counter wafted toward him, the news playing on the small television set filling the silence their awkward greetings left.

As though he had just remembered, before he removed his coat Izuru said, “I brought you something, too,” and produced the jar of caviar that had been weighing down his pocket. “A sort of end-of-the-year present. I wanted to show my appreciation for everything you’ve done for me. It isn’t much . . .”

“You didn’t have to do something like that.”

“It’s okay if you don’t like it.”

“No, it’s not that at all. I love this sort of stuff, but I never have the luxury . . .” Mitani tried to hide a smile, and it ended up boyish and lopsided on his lips. “People might think it was a bribe.”

“Who cares what anyone else thinks,” said Izuru. “It’s New Year’s Eve.” And a crooked smile crept onto his lips as well. There must have been something in his look that set Mitani’s mind at ease, something like what passes between people sharing an inside joke. After a moment, he nodded as he hefted the small jar in his hand. “Thanks,” he said quietly.

They ate sitting around the coffee table in front of the television, talking about their trip to Unzen—which now, with a day’s cushion, could be discussed in a lighter fashion—and the winter holiday that seemed, after the last few days, already so long ago. Meanwhile, the annual Red and White Song Competition played on the television screen, and one by one singers performed their hits of the past year. Against this backdrop, the subject turned to Izuru, and Mitani asked him the inevitable: if his parents minded him spending the rest of the holiday at school.

“Why should they? They’re probably glad to be rid of me.” Izuru couldn’t help his sudden bitterness.

“Why? What happened?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem, really. All they seem to do when we’re actually all home together is ask me how my grades are, and do I like my classes—but they keep asking the same questions even after I’ve answered them. I don’t think they care about me at all. I mean, they care enough to make sure I’m not dead, but they don’t care to ask me about _me_.” He took a deep breath and stuffed a gyoza into his mouth as though doing so might stop the resentment within him from coming out. “I was bored out of my mind. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“I’m sure they love you more than you think.”

So Mitani said in passing, some aside uttered before he took another sip of tea, but Izuru gaped at him. Perhaps his reaction was a bit exaggerated, because the sip of tea almost came back out Mitani's nose. “Sensei,” Izuru grumbled, “stop being all mentorly. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Some people just aren’t very good at acting like parents,” Mitani clarified, once he had sobered a bit. “It doesn’t mean they’re unqualified for the job.”

“You obviously don't know my parents.”

Izuru turned to the screen, but could not keep the act up for long. He shot a look back over his shoulder in good-humor a second later. “Do you know, in all the time I was home I probably told them more about Fujisawa and the others than me. They seem to really care whether I have lots of friends. You wouldn’t call that a sign of guilt, would you, Sensei?”

“I think that’s wishful thinking on your part, Izuru.”

“Yeah? Well, I think it’s the only reason they let me come back early.”

“Then why are you here with your boring professor?” Mitani said. “Aren’t the other kids having parties tonight?”

To his surprise, Izuru sobered. “I lied, you know,” he said. “They’re not my friends. I don’t have any.”

“That’s not true. All the others look up to you.”

“Only because I’m student council president.” He turned back to the food, a slight sigh escaping him. “I don’t know,” he said, refusing to meet his professor’s eyes. “All I know is, the only reason I came back early was that I wanted to see you, Sensei. I’m not lying when I say you’re the only person I’ve ever truly looked up to.”

“Surely there are better candidates than me.”

“I’m serious,” Izuru said, but he did not miss the note of regret in Mitani's words. Thinking it would be good to change the subject, he began again, “Anyway, you never told me what your family is like.”

But Mitani did not answer. He merely stared past Izuru as though he hadn’t heard him, leaving the boy to wonder if he had said something out of turn or if his question really had fallen on deaf ears. He had so many questions for Mitani, but it always seemed to him that when the time came to ask them, he found himself prying where he shouldn’t.

He opened his mouth to take it back when Mitani said, “I love this song.”

Izuru turned back to the TV screen, where dancers dressed in matching kimono paraded around the stage behind an energetic middle-aged singer. “Enka?” he groaned, and leaned back on his hands. “Sensei, you _are_ a square.”

“I prefer 'old mind,'” Mitani corrected him. “And I’ll bet you a thousand yen the women win this year.”

“Make it two.” Izuru couldn’t help his grin. “Square.”

The songs passed, and after another hour they opened the jar of caviar to have with crackers. Izuru offered to heat up the sake, thinking that if he did that much, Mitani could not out of reciprocity prohibit him from having a cup himself; but in any case, he need not have worried, as the age-old tradition that one should never drink alone, especially on New Year’s Eve, won out. It wasn’t long before they were both singing along with the lyrics on the bottom of the screen and sharing a good laugh. Izuru felt closer to his professor than ever before. He felt like in that simple act of laughing together, even if it was at their own expense, over something far removed from history or academics, they had opened their hearts to one another. To say nothing of the fact that Izuru could not honestly remember the last time he had laughed aloud with anyone.

Of course, he knew the sake had an effect on him—he felt it warming his blood and lowering his inhibitions—but he had to believe that there was something in Mitani’s attitude toward him, something in his smile or posture that might tell Izuru his feelings were returned. As they sat side by side on the floor, slowly coming down from their mirth, their backs against the sofa, he drew his knees to his chest and dared to lean against his professor. Instead of stiffening, he was pleasantly surprised when Mitani put an arm around him a few tense seconds later, just as he had on the bus when he had thought Izuru was asleep.

Again came that voice in Izuru’s mind urging him not to waste this chance. This time, sensing the prize within his grasp, he could no longer hesitate to take it.

Their sake cups were empty. Raising himself to his knees, Izuru reached for the carafe, saying, “Hey, Sensei, shall I get us a refill?”

At least, that was what he had intended to do. He never quite made it so far as the kitchen, or even to his feet. Mitani began to turn to him to respond, and Izuru saw in his professor's eyes in that half a second all the trust and warm appreciation he had longed more than anything to receive since the start of term. It was only a look, but a strong, irrational panic seized him suddenly that it might only be an illusion cast by the flickering light from the television screen, or a result of the sake. Either way, he could not bear the idea of losing it.

Instead, Izuru leaned forward and kissed his professor's lips. He spared hardly a thought for the consequences of his actions, though he could feel the sake flowing through him, making his blood hot, his mind swim. That was no deterrent. All Izuru knew was what he was compelled to do, and the action, the barest touch of Mitani's flesh against his, felt only natural, like magnets coming together. He felt his face grow warm, but it was not from shame or embarrassment so much as from the yearning that arose like a flood from within him. He had gone through these motions before, but there was something about kissing Mitani that made that simple act feel so novel, so pure, and so much more intoxicating than the sake. It pulled the space between Izuru's navel and groin taut like the string of a bow, and with each meeting of their lips it was twanged. A pleasant nausea came over him as he pressed harder, tilting his head so their lips might fit together more easily. The hand that had never quite reached the sake carafe cupped Mitani’s jaw.

At first Mitani did not resist. He accepted Izuru’s kiss with wonderment, perhaps wondering in his surprise if _this_ was really what he had been led to believe all his life was worse than murder in the eyes of God, this heavenly sensation. A gasp escaped him, mirroring Izuru's elation, and, feeling invincible, Izuru opened his mouth against his professor's to drink in that sound. The saltiness of caviar and sake on Mitani’s tongue was such a carnal taste that he let out a small, choked moan. . . .

And somehow in doing so he shattered the spell. Mitani pushed him away.

He had not been rough, but there was a frightened forcefulness in the gesture that made Izuru hold his breath. Nor did his expression leave any room for doubt as to his professor's true feelings. The sinking feeling that came over Izuru was one he was not used to, so at first he did not recognize it for what it was:

Failure.

He refused to acknowledge it, until all in an instant the reality of his situation hit him. He had taken this trust between them too far, past the point it could be mended, all because he thought he had glimpsed that thing he wanted most in Mitani's eyes, when he should have known better than to think it could ever be there to begin with. Izuru realized then that he’d never even bothered to ask if Mitani had a girlfriend. But he saw the emptiness in his professor’s expression, the way he recoiled from Izuru, and a surge of anger rose within him.

“What are you doing?”

Izuru did not miss the disgust that undermined his professor's blunt words. “What do you think?” he said less than gently.

“Jesus, Izuru, you said you were going to get us a refill. Why . . . What would you do _that_ for?”

“Because I felt like it. Why else?”

“That’s not a little thing you can just think about doing and do it.”

“I was curious. I wanted to see what it would be like to kiss you, so I did it. Haven’t you ever felt like that, too?”

“No.” Mitani’s answer was uncharacteristically final. “Not about my own sex. Those feelings are . . . abnormal. Unhealthy.”

“That’s just what we’ve been told to think. You're the one who's been telling us to think for ourselves, so don't tell me you actually believe it. The kind of stuff you've had us read, Sensei, you mean to tell me, honestly, that you've never at least been curious? You didn’t like it?”

Shock crossed his teacher’s face. “And you did?”

Izuru smiled.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he confessed. “Yeah, I liked it. I liked it a lot.”

But Mitani dismissed his answer, running a shaky hand through his hair. No doubt he was thinking back to all the other times they had met outside of class, and chastising himself for never having guessed this could be what Izuru had truly intended. God, to think they had shared a hotel room together! How many professors lost their jobs, their teaching licenses for less than that? “I shouldn’t have let you drink. You’ve had too much—the alcohol’s gone to your head—”

“I’m not drunk!”

Izuru forced a chuckle and it seemed to his own ears to come from a stranger; but he could not believe the evening was coming to this. “I’m not so drunk that I don’t know what I’m doing, anyway,” he admitted. “I told you: I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I’d begun to think that maybe you felt the same way about me.”

“Based on what?”

“I don’t know. Gut feeling? I guess I was just hoping I wouldn’t be wrong.”

Mitani reached for his sake cup automatically, but, remembering it was empty, decided against it. In any case, Izuru wasn’t the only one it had affected. “Well, you were wrong,” he said quietly. “I don’t harbor any perverted feelings like those.”

“Perverted. . . .” Izuru clenched his jaw and forced himself to nod. Every ounce of his being resisted admitting defeat, but if what Mitani said was really true, if he had really been that misguided . . . “Yeah,” he said, “I guess I was wrong.”

And determined to make a hasty retreat, he got to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Mitani asked him.

If that had been desperation Izuru caught in his voice, however, the boy ignored it. “Back to my room,” he said. It was just his imagination. Mitani did not care about him as much as he had claimed. Everything he had said before had been to alleviate his own sense of obligation, and he was still, after all, just another educator doing his job.

That was what Izuru was thinking when a hand closed around his wrist.

“You can’t go anywhere like this,” Mitani said.

With a snort, Izuru yanked his arm away. “Why, because you’ll get reprimanded if anyone finds out I’m drunk?”

“Yes,” came the blunt response.

And Izuru wanted so badly to pretend that was all Mitani was—that he hadn't felt so warm and desperate beneath Izuru's lips. “Why should I care?” Already he could feel the fight leaving him, bitter disillusionment sinking in. “I don’t want to stay here any longer. And why should you want me to, if you find me that disgusting?”

“Please. For my sake. I don’t know what I did to mislead you, but whatever it was, believe me when I say I regret it.”

Mitani combed his fingers nervously through his long hair, his hand seeming to tremble as he stood facing Izuru, yet effectively avoiding looking him in the eye. “Can’t we just admit it was a mistake, say we had too much to drink, and pretend it never happened? I wouldn’t want you to be disciplined for this, either, Izuru. I know it will be awkward, but stay a little while longer.”

The air blown out of his sails, Izuru could only look stubbornly past him.

With a slight sigh, Mitani gave up. “I . . . I’m going to boil the water. If you want some tea or something . . .”

He trailed off, and went to the kitchenette to put the kettle on. The sounds of the television program came back to Izuru then, an audience laughing at some pop star’s poor sense of humor. It felt like someone else was controlling Izuru's body as he walked back to the couch and sat down. He didn’t feel like himself. The desire to turn to stone returned, namely, this time, before the shock wore off and the devastation Izuru knew was to follow hit him full-force in front of Mitani.

Who had the gall to call to him from the kitchenette, “Are you sure you're feeling all right?”

“I’m not feeling sick, if that’s what you mean,” Izuru answered woodenly back. Whether he was all right was another matter entirely.

There was a pause, and then Mitani said in the uncomfortable silence, “Look, you can spend the night here if you want. You know, to sleep off . . . I know it doesn't look it, but the couch is actually rather comfortable.”

“I’m sure it is,” Izuru said. Perhaps he was meant to take the offer as some kind of apology, but it felt to him then like anything but. He could never make Mitani understand what an extremely bitter pill this was to swallow, this feeling that for once in his life Izuru would not get his way.

And it was the one time that actually mattered.

* * *

For all that he had drunk that evening, Mitani could not get to sleep that night. The memory of Izuru kissing him resurfaced in vivid detail whenever he closed his eyes, melting indistinguishably into the erotic dreams of which he had felt an unwitting victim. For hours he lay awake in the dark in a state halfway between sanity and madness, between arousal and disgust.

The one fact he held on to with any conviction was that Izuru had betrayed him. Maybe it was true what Fujisawa said, that Izuru had only made himself ill for their teacher’s attention. But if that were the case, was anything Izuru had done or said—not least among which his speech to the student council about following the teachings of Christ—genuine? As much as he wanted to deny that, Mitani could not help but wonder, as he revisited every discussion between the two of them over the past couple months, trying to glean from them Izuru’s true intentions.

But as much as Mitani wanted it to be, the issue was not that simple. He could not admit it to Izuru, the fear of student conspiracy still looming large in his mind, but he had liked it. And that was one truth for which he had only his own body to blame. The kiss, Izuru’s weight against him, everything. He had liked it too much. And that was what was so wrong. It was so wrong that even now the thought crossed his mind of going to Izuru, who slept like the dead on his sofa, and doing the unthinkable.

God, was this who he really was? Was this the true Mitani, a deviant who had been hidden from his conscious self, deep inside him his entire life? And why did he feel so eager to embrace that nature when he knew how sinful it was? But he could not find a satisfactory answer to that question, and it continued to torture him until morning.

They ate a silent breakfast, coffee and toast, sitting across from one another at the small dining table without once making eye contact, conversing the least amount necessary. Then Izuru went back to his own dorm.

One need not have looked very far to find there were plenty of things to do to pass the time the last few days of the holiday. Taking breaks from their study sessions, the other students kicked a soccer ball around or played Frisbee in the cold air outside in the courtyards; or else they gathered around a table in the library to play the _One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets_ card game as per the New Year tradition. Izuru found it a welcome diversion, focusing all his thoughts on remembering and finding the appropriate capping verses. Perhaps he even laughed a little, throwing himself fully into the friendly competition with his peers, just one teenage boy among a dozen others. After all, this was where he was supposed to be. This was where he belonged: the student body president in and among the student body.

But it was not enough to make Izuru forget, let alone forgive, what had transpired New Year's Eve, which he only fully realized when Mitani showed up at his door the next day. The young professor had a haggard look about him, as though he had not slept in days. Rather than feeling sympathetic, Izuru found himself glaring at the sight of him.

“Sensei.” His voice sounded cold and distant to his own ears. “What are you doing here?”

When Mitani asked out of habit if he was disturbing him, Izuru shook his head, answered a noncommittal, “Come in,” and stepped aside, closing the door after his professor and crossing his arms.

“This is a nice room,” Mitani said, looking around the single; but it was obvious to them both that he was only filling the silence. “No, it’s not,” Izuru said, and repeated his question: “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see if you wanted to get something to eat, if you haven’t already, since it’s past noon. . . .”

“You came here just to ask me that?”

Mitani colored. “No.” Whatever he had to say, it was obviously something difficult for him. He confessed after a moment, “No, I . . . I came because I had to talk to you. I was thinking about what happened.”

 _What happened._ Was that what it was going to be referred to from this point on? Izuru rolled his eyes, but any anger he might have harbored for his professor the night before seemed absent when he needed it most. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said with a shrug. “I made a mistake and I regret it. You were right to say we should forget about it.”

“But that’s just it,” said Mitani in a hushed tone. “I can’t forget about it. That’s what’s driving me mad.”

With a heavy sigh, he sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands hanging in surrender between his knees. “You weren’t trying to set me up, were you?” he asked.

Izuru started. “Of course not.” He resented the mere suggestion.

Mitani’s shoulders slumped in something like relief. “That’s good, I guess. So, then, I guess I can tell you, discreetly, that maybe I didn’t hate what you did as much as I said? Maybe it piqued my curiosity a bit. Maybe I liked it . . . somewhat.”

Izuru regarded him silently.

“But I was also afraid,” Mitani went on. “You must be able to understand that. You and I were taught the same things in our religious education. Whether it feels good or not, it’s still wrong. It’s still a corruption of God’s will to have these kinds of thoughts about each other, even if we can’t help them. Because nothing good can come of them.”

“You don’t sound that penitent, though.”

“I’ve been trying. But no matter how hard I try to change my thoughts or how guilty I feel, I still can’t deny that there are some things the sin of which I _want_ to feel for myself. It must be the scholar in me; that’s all I can think of to explain it. Otherwise . . . Otherwise, how will I know what the truth is, one way or the other?”

He tilted his face up, as though imploring Izuru for some sort of confirmation. Denial, even. Any answer more concrete than the half-assed one he had given. But instead, Izuru only took his professor’s face in his hands, and, leaning down, pressed their lips together. Whether something in Mitani’s words had renewed his hope, or he only thought he could not make his situation any more hopeless than it already was, it did not seem to matter to Izuru.

Either way, when Mitani pulled away this time it was only to say, “This isn’t Confession, Izuru. Just because I’ve admitted my guilt, it doesn’t somehow make this okay.”

But even as he said that, his lips were brushing like hungry ghosts against Izuru’s skin. “Jesus,” the boy sighed against him. “You think I care about that?”

They kissed again, and Mitani, for all he had said about guilt and sin, made no move to resist it, not even when Izuru placed a knee on the mattress beside his hip and laid them both down on the comforter. Somehow, though there was no logical reason it should have, it felt only natural to surrender to Izuru's guidance, to his sure touch. Trembling slightly, still unsure how he should feel, he allowed Izuru to teach him for once, pulling himself closer to Mitani’s body as they turned onto their sides.

Mitani tangled his fingers in Izuru’s short hair, and the boy swallowed a moan deep in his throat. “Touch me, Sensei,” he murmured, his eyes dark and longing like in Mitani’s dreams as his gaze flickered across his professor’s face.

Mitani thought he had been. “Where?”

“Everywhere. Here, like this.” And as though Mitani needed direction, Izuru's fingertips traveled down his abdomen, making goose pimples rise on Mitani's limbs as he tried to mirror Izuru’s actions. He caressed the boy's arm and laid his hand on Izuru’s waist, but Izuru grew impatient and grabbed his wrist as they kissed, moving that hand lower onto his hip, sliding it up under the hem of his sweater. Needing only that invitation, Mitani's fingers dove under the back of the sweater, his palm spreading flush over the small of Izuru’s back, greedy for the heat of his skin through the thin cotton shirt he wore beneath.

The curve of his spine and the way his waist dipped with each writhing motion, each heavy breath against him—Mitani had almost forgotten that the very youth and masculinity he treasured in Izuru's body beneath his fingers was something all his upbringing told him was forbidden, but that knowledge only made him want to delve deeper. “M-m . . . Sensei . . .” Izuru breathed just as he had in that first dream, to just the same effect. With their bodies pressed as close together as they were, there was no way Izuru could have mistaken his body’s reaction.

Suddenly self-conscious, Mitani broke away and rolled onto his back. With nowhere else to go, Izuru did the same, tilting his head to rest against Mitani’s shoulder as he caught his breath.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Mitani said. “Doing this.” But made no effort to move. “What if someone walks in and catches us?”

“If that happens, I'll make sure they keep quiet about what they see,” Izuru said so nonchalantly that Mitani thought he must be making a joke. “Did I take things too far?”

“Probably.” Mitani sighed. “But I guess it was sort of an experiment, wasn’t it?”

“M-m. An experiment, huh?”

Yes, Mitani assured himself, that was all this was: He was only satisfying an intellectual curiosity, and after all, had that ever hurt anyone? Taking comfort in that thought, Mitani allowed himself to close his eyes for a moment, and did not notice that Izuru had sat up until he felt the boy’s hands on the button of his fly, dangerously close to his erection. He started. “Izuru, what are you doing?”

“Relax.” Izuru’s eyes flickered reassuringly to his before he concentrated again on his fingers’ work. “You can’t go out like this. What will everyone think?”

“You don’t have to . . . It’ll go away by itself,” Mitani tried, but Izuru only laughed at that.

“But it’s my fault, isn’t it? Besides, I _want_ to do this for you, Sensei,” he mumbled. Nor could his intention be clearer as he leaned over from where he sat on the edge of the bed. On one level it repulsed Mitani, but he found himself strangely unable, and unwilling, to argue. How there could be something pure in Izuru’s manner escaped logic, when the act itself was so filthy, but it was there nonetheless. Mitani could only utter his name in half-hearted protest at the first cautious touch of flesh against flesh, first of Izuru’s fingers, then his tongue.

Mitani let out a ragged sigh in place of a moan, conscious of the notoriously thin dorm walls. He closed his eyes, partly in pleasure, but also partly from the guilt he felt, which was inescapable, at seeing Izuru’s vermilion, adolescent lips around him. But the image remained behind his eyelids, arousing even in its grotesqueness, and he knew it would not take much before he lost control.

“Izuru . . .” he started, tangling his fingers in the boy’s hair, but it only seemed to be taken for encouragement. “Izuru, stop—” But Izuru resolutely ignored him. When Mitani came, he seemed to shudder himself, eyelashes fluttering in his own quiet, sympathetic orgasm. He braced himself, his Adam’s apple bobbing, his free hand wrinkling the fabric of Mitani’s trousers as he stifled a moan around Mitani's cock. It was a beautiful sight. But with the clarity of the moment after ejaculation, the boy's ecstasy seemed as bestial to Mitani as the satiation of a leach.

He wasn’t aware his shame showed so clearly on his face until Izuru asked him cautiously, “Sensei?”

The sincerity of his concern in light of such a perverse act—he was still wiping the corners of his mouth clean—moved Mitani. Izuru's eager audacity, allowing his desire to sweep them both away pell-mell, without any regard for the rules they should have respected. . . .

That must have been what they called the reckless invincibility of youth. It stirred such contradictory emotions and desires within Mitani that it was a while before he found the wits to answer, and then he could only manage a dazed, “Hm?”

“Did I go too far that time?” Izuru asked him, dropping to the bed on one elbow to line up beside his professor.

“Yes,” Mitani breathed toward the ceiling.

Izuru was silent for a moment as he rolled onto his stomach, and gazed at the window. Then he said, “Can I come over tonight?”

Mitani was surprised by the readiness of his own answer.

“Yes.”

* * *

An experiment was what this was, Mitani told himself as he pulled off his clothes in the dark of his room, and he would not turn back until his curiosity was satisfied. Izuru's insistent touches would not let him in any case, nor could he willfully tear himself away from this wonderful scientific discovery that was the boy's naked body beneath him, an unexplored kingdom whose every valley and hillock that flexed with each ragged intake of breath he longed to map thoroughly and commit to his fingers' memory.

Izuru's own were cold on his skin from the winter's night air, if only at first, but his breath was hot against Mitani's face and neck. As was the inside of his thigh at Mitani's waist, the blood pumping in his veins like magma flowing below the surface. He was perfect, just like in Mitani's most vivid dreams. The subtle shifting of weight in Izuru's buttocks as he kneeled over his professor, the rumbling deep in Izuru's throat that vibrated beneath Mitani's mouth, the muscles in his stomach leaping with the throbbing ache of unsatisfied pleasure—each of these minute sensations was singular and intoxicating to Mitani, pulling him deeper into his transgression. Izuru's breathing filled his ears like the sound of waves, and he felt he would gladly submerge himself in them. He was already drowning beneath Izuru's dark gaze.

Feeling the boy’s need rise in tandem with his own, Mitani was acutely aware of how grave a leap this exploration was from that curiosity he had experienced before in private, that he had thought so horrible when Izuru indulged him only the other night. He was intimately conscious of the mortal sin of it, and knew that to give in to these desires with a boy and a student was no less than an act of ethical suicide.

Yet the guilt he should have felt was melted away, or, rather, overwhelmed by the utter and inexplicable purity of the sensations that coursed through his body. It was a curious, incongruous thing—a fact that simply should not have been, like catching the scent of spring flowers on the air in the middle of winter. Unnatural, yes, but who would complain of its beauty? Who would willfully wish it to end?

Izuru’s arm was taut as he leaned his weight on it, and with the other hand guided Mitani’s cock inside him. The gasps that fell from his open lips must have been akin to those of the saints in their ecstasies, penetrated by arrows or burned up by licking flames. Mitani sighed as he was enveloped in that heat. The words came to his mind unbidden: “Forgive us our trespasses.” It was not that he doubted Izuru’s forgiveness, however; that was no longer a question.

But they were both, in a sense, trespassing. Though it felt like a triumphant entrance through a gate on the way of youth, it was a forbidden world into which they had tread—a world they had been warned would be like Hell, but felt without a doubt like Heaven, lush with apricot and lilac. Perhaps that was the reason for forbidding it, like the fruit of knowledge that grew in Eden. Like St Augustine and the pear stolen from another’s garden, the source of this thrill was indistinguishable to them. Whether it was the sweet taste of the sin itself, or the simple illicitness of the act, in the end it made no difference: All rational thought was washed away in the flood of release.

“What are you going to do for room check?” Mitani asked as he slowly caught his breath. A glance at the digital clock told it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening, but the sky outside had been dark much longer.

Izuru had no intention of leaving. “If the dorm chief has a problem with my absence, I’ll fix it with him,” he said while laying breathy kisses on his teacher’s skin—as though that were the way to solve everything. He managed to find some new reserve of energy deep down inside his professor, and then Mitani no longer cared.

At some point, lying in some afterglow, they fell asleep. The sun shining at its acute winter angle into the room was what finally woke Izuru, telling him instantly that he had overslept. He was wrapped in Mitani’s bedsheets, but his professor was nowhere to be seen. Pulling on his slacks and shirt, he padded out to the living area. But he was alone.

That morning sun was shining through the stained glass window panes behind the altar of the chapel, as well. As brilliant and translucent as the jewels that paved the roads of Heaven, the colored panes hid the sun from view, separating and spreading each spectrum of its light throughout the inside of the building, setting dust motes aflame as they drifted silently through the abandoned space with the vague scent of candles. The crucifix, meanwhile, backlit, remained in shadow.

Mitani was in a sense glad for that, as he kneeled in one of the pews, alone in the chapel, his hands clasped on the hard back of the pew in front of him that dug uncomfortably into his wrists. In his view, this discomfort was the least he deserved.

 _I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be—_

Mitani bowed his head and hunched his shoulders.

“I’ve done a terrible thing,” he whispered. “Against my own will maybe, but nevertheless, I gave in to my body’s desires that I’ve tried so hard this last month to be rid of. Maybe if it was a woman, someone outside this place I wasn't responsible for, it wouldn’t have been so bad—it’s not like I took any vows—but as it was . . . Given who I am here and . . . and who _that person_ is . . . To commit such a reviled sin, I don’t know if I can even be forgiven that much, but please, my God, if you have any pity on this sinner help me to overcome these desires.” Pressing his forehead to the sides of his clasped hands: “ _Help me to understand why they are so wrong._ Because I have _tried_. I’ve tried to grasp that one truth, but no matter what I do, I cannot make myself understand.”

Father Robert had put it in the plainest language when Mitani had gone to him in desperation, his sinful dreams refusing to leave him in peace. It was almost scientific, his wording. The priest told him that everyone, every living thing, was put on the earth for a purpose: to create new life and protect the generations to come. It was for that purpose alone, that crucial chink in God’s plan, that sexual desires were made to exist.

But what could come of the union of two men? Nothing. Nothing, that is, but pain and torment. Thus the Lord forbade homosexual relations and made that empty act a sin before the eyes of Heaven.

In his conscious mind, Mitani had known that. He was a scholar, he possessed an analytical mind: He knew that, biologically, for the propagation of a species, the argument was sound. Nevertheless . . .

“I can’t understand why each time I try to see reason, the act itself seems less and less irrational. It feels . . .” _No._ No, he told himself, he could not call it that, but . . . “Natural.” But he wanted to. “But how can that be?”

He did not believe in devils, but he recognized the ease with which a person could slip into superstition. He was well aware of the snowball effect which paranoia had on the mind once it first took hold. He had watched people in his own life driven mad by their inability to master their guilt. And he had sworn never to become like that. What went wrong?

He never claimed to be perfect, but faith was something that was supposed to protect you. Even from your own innate demons, if you had enough of it. “And as the only element of salvation,” the fictional Adso had said, “I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions.” But that statement that had resonated for him with so much truth before seemed suddenly grossly insufficient.

God, don’t abandon me, he prayed with desperation in his heart of hearts, but lacked the courage to say it out loud.

From the doorway that connected the narthex and nave, Izuru watched him. Like an outsider looking into a world to which of his own will he had made sure he would never again have access. Yet he felt a queer twang of envy that did not belong. A blasphemous thought entered his mind and planted a seed there in his subconscious: a fear that the religion he claimed as his own might set itself up as his rival if he allowed it. That his own Christian faith might threaten the one thing he had come to value more than life itself.

Not wanting his presence there known, Izuru slipped out of the chapel. Out of sheer force of habit, he almost dipped his fingers into the bowl of water mounted on the wall to cross himself but, for some reason even he did not know, stopped himself short.

* * *

When classes started again, Fujisawa knew something had changed. It was not anything obvious that told him so. On instinct, perhaps, he picked up on Izuru’s shyness toward him, and a more reserved edge to his attitude of superiority. Fujisawa had expected to return smug, triumphant, eager to mock Izuru's own pathetic vacation, but somehow it seemed—though he couldn't point to any reason why—as though the situation was just the opposite. He felt like he was being mocked, but how or for what he could not ascertain.

Izuru was hiding something. That much Fujisawa was sure of. It was not knowing what that irritated him more than anything.

He heard from some of the third-years that Izuru had spent the latter part of the holiday on campus, but they could tell him little more than that with any certainty no matter what he did to refresh their memory. And he could hardly ask Izuru directly what the purpose of it had been without giving away his suspicion. As it was, he did suspect that Izuru had taken advantage of his absence during the holiday, had gained the upper hand in one way or another, and that Fujisawa’s presence at Saint Michel would have been all that was necessary to stop him. It was the affair with the duels all over again, he thought, resentment resurfacing with a vengeance within him.

Then he heard a rumor that Izuru and Mitani had gone to the mountains together, to that morbid Unzen of all places. If it were true, he had no choice but to treat it as an act of betrayal.

* * *

As though it had been auspiciously timed, the new year’s lesson brought them out of the Dark Ages of Europe into the illumination of Italy’s Renaissance. New scientific discoveries again challenged the infallibility of the Church’s word with accusations of heliocentricity, and these renewed heresies coincided with the faith’s revival of its roots, melding almost seamlessly into the layers of Greco-Roman myth and symbolism that were heaped afresh onto the holy icons, and the Hellenic worship of the male body as the very image of the beauty of God's Creation and dominion over the Universe. The old lords of the feudal system saw their ancient reign set like the full moon with the rise of a wealthier, more powerful merchant class, and papal scandals followed accordingly when the new ruling class realized salvation could be bought. Perspectives underwent a revolutionary change, whether in philosophies on life and the world, or in art.

Mitani had them examining the two hand in hand, jumping into the Italian Renaissance unit with even more childlike excitement than before. The grand monumentalism of Donatello and Michelangelo; the pagan poetry of Botticelli; the tender loftiness of Raphael and daring psychology of da Vinci—all captured in a slide photograph.

When it came time for the students to discuss what they had seen and ask questions, Fujisawa languidly raised a hand.

The other hand supported his chin as he said, “I have a question.”

There was something in his tone that made Mitani hesitate. “Yes?”

The boy smiled. “Well,” he began, assuming a tone of innocent curiosity that fooled no one, “from all we’ve seen, it would appear that Rome in those days had a rather lax policy on homosexuality—in fact, if anything they seem downright encouraging. Is that not the case, Sensei?”

Izuru started. He shot a concerned look at Mitani. But if their professor saw anything to make him self-conscious in that assertion, he hid it well. “What gave you that impression, Fujisawa?”

“Looking at what they considered religious art in the Renaissance, and what the Vatican has in its collection. Take Donatello’s ‘David.’ I’m sure it was a major breakthrough in sculpture technique, but it’s also just another example of ephebiphilism sanctioned by the Church. You know whoever commissioned it had to be some sick pervert to twist a scriptural icon into the poster boy of pederasty. The feather on Goliath’s helmet goes right up his ass.”

His classmates grimaced. “That’s sick, Fujisawa.”

“I’m just telling it like it is.” He shrugged. “You can see for yourself.”

“That piece was a private commission,” Mitani pointed out. “The most it has to do with the Church is the patron’s donations or political protection. The Church did not have the luxury of choosing its supporters based on what they did in private, especially if they were so powerful.”

“Granted. But Michelangelo was doing work for the Church all the time—they practically worshiped him—and it’s well known he was a homosexual.”

“That’s mere speculation,” Izuru said. To the rest of the class, his addition to the conversation did not bat one eye. But Fujisawa’s face lit up with the challenge, and perhaps with a belief he was on the right track. “You have to take into consideration that in those days it was illegal for women to pose nude for artists.”

Fujisawa smirked.

“Fair enough. But that still doesn’t explain his popularity. Personally, I don’t see how his art was that great. What he’s really remembered for is reviving the Classical style, and Sensei should know—er, having a masters in art history and everything—that the Classical period in ancient Greece praised the love that existed between men above any other kind.”

“Which was based on a pedagogical relationship, Fujisawa,” their professor said, “not sex.”

“Is that so?” A victorious smile turned up on side of Fujisawa’s mouth. Mitani was telling them a lie—well, a half-truth, in any case—and he wanted to know why. “Well, whatever you call it, it was erotic too. Plato outlines that pretty thoroughly.”

“So, your theory is that when the Catholic Church adopted the Classical appreciation of the male form, it also adopted its perversions.”

Fujisawa raised an eyebrow. “‘Perversion’? I thought Sensei at least would understand how common it is.”

“People who were caught engaging in homosexual behavior were punished by the authorities,” Izuru said, rising to their professor's defense. “Often with torture or public humiliation. It wasn’t something that was treated lightly—like you seem to suggest.”

“Maybe if you got caught,” said Fujisawa, unable to let his position go. “Or if you didn’t have the power of wealth or the Church behind you. What was that line from _Name of the Rose_? Something about not being able to deny the feminine attraction of a young novice? Just like the Buddhist monks with their boy favorites. The clergy reinforces the old worship of the catamite and passes it off as celibacy. That’s how they’ve been able to get away with sodomy for centuries. If nothing can come of it, maybe it isn’t really sex.”

“I think the topic has passed the point of relevancy—and decency.” Mitani said this calmly, but Izuru, who was looking for it, noticed the discomfort in his professor’s poise, how hard he was struggling to keep his composure. “Bring it up in philosophy or sociology and you’d have an interesting point for debate.”

“But I’m interested to know why it’s so prevalent in the history of Christianity,” Fujisawa insisted.

“And I’m telling you it has nothing to do with Christian history.” Mitani raised his voice. “Just because some members of the religious community have practiced it in the past doesn’t change the fact it’s a useless behavior denounced by God and by the Church. Now, can we please change the subject?”

His repulsion was instinctual, Izuru knew, a response to the fear he had of being caught laced with the disgust that had been ingrained in him by that religious upbringing he was so quick to mention. He wondered if under it all Mitani did not feel a lingering guilt as well, for indulging in such illicit behavior while condemning it.

Fujisawa, on the other hand, wore his smug smile unabashedly as he sat back and stared at Mitani from under his dark brows. His blatant self-promotion was almost more than Izuru could stand for. None of the others would have put any more stock in what he had said as anything other than the ramblings of an ordinary teenage boy with an ordinary adolescent interest in the shock value of certain perverse subjects. By tomorrow they would have forgotten. But it was clear to Izuru that Fujisawa knew something.

He was flaunting it. He didn’t care that his argument held no water, or that for a few minutes he might have made a fool of himself in front of the class. The point he had been trying to make wasn’t his point at all.

* * *

Eventually the bell rang, and the students gathered their things and got up to leave. Izuru stayed behind. Sitting by the window, he looked half asleep as he lazily finished his lecture notes. Preoccupied like this, he did not see the look of suspicion that Fujisawa cast his way as he left the classroom.

Mitani was erasing the board when the last of them had left and Izuru finally stood and took up his books. “I’m off, Sensei,” he started.

But Mitani caught the hesitation in his step as the boy reached the door. The way things had changed, the usual noncommittal good-byes of the previous calendar year were no longer sufficient.

“Okazaki.”

Izuru shut the classroom door in front of him. “What?”

“Um. . . .” Beneath his fringe of hair, Mitani colored. In the awkward way that had become his habit since the end of the holiday, he said, “Don’t forget you have a test on Friday.”

As if that was really what weighed so heavily on his mind. “You told us that when the bell rang,” Izuru said.

“Oh. Right.”

Dreading the uncomfortable silence that would surely have followed, Izuru kissed him instead. It was what Mitani wanted anyway, wasn’t it? Mitani caressed his arm and Izuru pressed closer. It felt so good to be in his professor's arms like this, it was no wonder it had become all but impossible to concentrate on lectures when this was all he could think of. He wondered how Mitani carried on so well. Izuru must have allowed his body to get ahead of him just a little too much, because the grip on his arm tightened in order to pry him away. “Are you crazy?” Mitani said gently. “You shouldn’t do that here.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not. If anyone saw you doing that, I would be fired.”

“Saw _me_?” Izuru said.

Mitani sighed. “You know what I mean. _I’m_ the one who's supposed to be responsible. It’s not like I can say you came on to me, can I?” He brushed the back of his hand over his forehead and gathered his lecture notes in a show of seriousness, but he did not need to be so blunt. “Look,” Mitani tried again more apologetically. “You can come over tonight if you want.”

“I don't know. Are you sure that's what you want?” Izuru said. “If you're too busy I wouldn’t want to be a distraction.”

“No. I mean, yes, of course that's what I want.” Mitani sighed again. It felt as though he could not lower his voice enough to safely admit: “More than anything, in fact, I’d like for you to come over.”

Izuru smiled. It was not necessary to say he looked forward to it. There was no other thought he could find to occupy him, and perhaps that was the reason Izuru jumped at finding Fujisawa waiting for him on the mezzanine of the stairs.

Surprise crossed his classmate’s features momentarily as well before being replaced by a sneer. “You and Sensei must have a lot to talk about,” he said. “I didn’t know you were so big on Christian history. What was it this time? Medici popes? The trial of Copernicus?”

“Why should you care?”

Izuru made to pass him by, but Fujisawa stepped in the middle of his path.

“I don’t. But, now that you mention it, it’s kind of unlike you not to just make something up if it really was no big deal. What’s going on between you two?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Fujisawa.”

No one could say Izuru was not skilled at feigning ignorance, but if anyone knew his mannerisms and nuances it was Fujisawa. He glared. “You know what I mean. That was quite a show you two put on, defending the Church and its practices. You can’t expect me to believe you of all people, Okazaki, meant what you said. So. You’re together, aren’t you?”

“That’s ridiculous—”

“Is it? I’m willing to bet you’re fucking, too. I can tell by the way you two look at each other. It’s sickening.” Fujisawa snorted. “Jesus. But I guess I can’t say I’m surprised, can I? I always knew he was a pervert, the things he talks about—”

“You’re mistaken,” Izuru said. “Sensei would never do anything of the sort. He’s not the kind of person who would just embrace something he considers to be a sin that lightly.” Mentally Izuru cringed at his own words. He was such a hypocrite, saying precisely what he detested when it came from Mitani’s mouth.

Fujisawa grinned. “Sounds like you have first-hand knowledge. So you’ll admit you tried?”

“Yeah, right. Like I said, I know his personality. I’m telling you, it isn’t in his capacity.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Izuru started. It was out before he could stop and think about it: “You’d better not do anything—”

“Why not?” Fujisawa shrugged. His long eyes had a hard edge when he turned them to Izuru’s again. “If you’re not interested in finding out, then I might as well take a shot at it. What is there to lose? Unless, of course, you are interested.”

“I care about Sensei’s feelings, at least,” Izuru said. “He’s a human being, Fujisawa, not some trophy. I know you’re still bitter about losing the student council presidency, but there’s no reason to bring Sensei into it.”

Perhaps he expected his accusation to hit a sensitive button. But Fujisawa only laughed and stuck his hands into his pockets. “So the heat is on, huh? I guess we’ll find out between the two of us what Sensei’s feelings really are.”

Izuru clenched his jaw so hard at that it hurt. But what could he say? He felt that if he went too far either way he would expose his and Mitani's relationship—as was the way with secrets, it felt ready to burst from him at the slightest provocation—and give Fujisawa just the fuel he needed against Izuru. And for that, he resented his vice-president even more.

But he wondered as he lay in Mitani’s bed—as the thought came to him at the moment of climax, _Sensei is mine_ —was he not being just as selfish? Was he not a hypocrite after all? If Fujisawa can play an angel, he thought, then so can I. Though in truth it felt more appropriate to say they were both playing devils.

* * *

Convinced that Izuru was lying about his involvement with their teacher, Fujisawa schemed to ruin him. But the very thing that Mitani was afraid of deterred Fujisawa as well. He could not report what he suspected to the school administration and squander his own chance at victory.

It was better to go to the source. Like he had that day in class, he dropped deceptively innocent hints to which Mitani seemed oblivious and for which Izuru detested him even more. When Mitani asked him when they were alone about Fujisawa's inflammatory behavior, Izuru knew he had to do something. Until then, he had been content to maintain an indifferent attitude toward his classmate, counting on ignorance and denial to guard his secret. But when an obscure rumor began to circulate among the more observant of the students, he knew from whom they had originated; and even though the rumors themselves gave him a queer sense of satisfaction, Izuru could not allow the perpetrator to get away with impunity.

Izuru might have mentioned to another student within earshot of one of their stricter professors that Fujisawa had more illicit contraband in his possession than cigarettes and pornography. He didn’t stop to think he might have gone too far until plainclothes police officers arrived at the school the next day and searched Fujisawa’s room. Standing outside in the hall, the subject of everyone’s attention and curious whispers, the vice-president was uncharacteristically silent, but the look in his narrow eyes could be described as no less than murderous. Someone would suffer for his humiliation.

“They’re saying they got a tip that Fujisawa had marijuana in his room,” Izuru overheard Maeda say. The freckled first-year was one of the school’s biggest rumor-mongers; but he was oblivious to who had started this one in particular. “They didn’t find anything, of course. But I’d hate to be the guy who started that rumor after this.”

Fujisawa did not speak to him, but Izuru could read his accusations in the dark looks the vice-president shot him. He felt a slight twang of remorse, but not for the boy he had once thought of as a kind of ally. Where Fujisawa was concerned, Izuru felt only satisfaction, and was only in the back of his mind afraid of retribution. If anyone had any proof of Izuru’s movements at night, it was Hinoki. And Fujisawa did not bother to hide the fact that he was conspiring with the dorm chief behind Izuru’s back. What promises he must have made Hinoki, Izuru could only guess, and it left the student council president walking a thin line.

By chance an opportunity presented itself.

The assistant librarian, an attractive college-aged woman with thick glasses, was let go without a word to the student body. A little prying on the part of the student council revealed the reason. She had been suspected of doing improper favors for students for a while, but the idea that she had been intimate with members of the student body had not come to light until the head librarian had caught her cozying up to one of them in the back room. He had not been able to make out the face of the perpetrator, but what he had witnessed was enough to confront the young woman; and under emotional stress she confessed to her crime without revealing the boy’s identity.

Even barring the dorm chief’s reaction to the news, Izuru knew it had been Hinoki seeing her. The bespectacled young man was one of the most flagrant womanizers in the school, refusing to buy into the bisexuality of convenience some of his peers had come to embrace. On top of which, he was not shy about the fact he had no qualms stretching the limitations of his station to include bribery and entrapment.

Never mind that Izuru had used the young woman for his own purposes on an occasion or two, and Fujisawa likewise; the way the two second-years saw it, it was her own fault for preying on repressed high school boys. But Hinoki was distraught—for his own sake. What would happen to him if the school discovered the dorm chief had been abusing his own power in that way?

As much pleasure as he might have gotten watching Hinoki swallow a taste of his own medicine, Izuru decided to confess to the crime himself. And it wasn’t a complete lie. “If you doubt I’m telling the truth, you can ask Hinoki,” he told a small gathering that included the head librarian and the same senior professors who had turned Fujisawa over to the police.

Izuru knew exactly how to play them, hanging his head in semblance of prayer as he told them, “I knew it wasn’t appropriate. But, being surrounded by nothing but boys all the time, I couldn’t help myself. I felt like my body was out of control and that I had to satisfy its wants or I would burst.” There was a strange irony to confessing these things, as though he weren’t talking about the young woman at all, but channeling Mitani’s own feelings toward him, and none of the other professors would ever know the difference.

“I’m sorry I ever allowed it to happen,” he continued with as much remorse as he thought their credibility could take. He even managed to squeeze out a few tears. “You can suspend me if you think it’s necessary. My biggest regret is how disappointed my folks will be when they find out about this.”

Of course, he didn’t care what his parents thought. Nor did he think they would ever hear of the affair. The mere mention was enough to prompt the faculty to let him go with little more than a slap on the wrist and a “Don’t let it happen again.” His honesty and show of remorse were satisfactory, they said. To forgive is divine, they said. And even if it were not, he was the president of the student council. What were they going to do?

“Thank you,” was all Hinoki said to him when they were alone. There was nothing more that needed to be said. All his gratitude was encapsulated in those two simple words and in the look that passed between them. Hinoki knew better than anyone how Izuru was out most nights, and Fujisawa must have filled in the rest. However, the administration would hear none of it from him after Izuru’s false confession. For a while, Fujisawa’s scheming died down.

Mitani was less pleased about the matter—what partisan account Izuru gave him of it—than expected. It had nothing to do with the allegation Izuru had been fooling around with the young woman either. It was nothing less than a close call, he said, and what was more: “You lied for us.”

For some reason Izuru could not comprehend, that bothered him.

* * *

Lying on his side on Mitani’s bed, flipping through books on the art of Christendom, Izuru was often struck by the large color images that leaped out at him. What was it about Christianity, he wondered at these times, that inspired such morbidity? The Italians and Spanish and Germans all had their own perverse fascinations with the deaths of martyrs. Sebastian, torso riddled with arrows. Lawrence, lowering himself onto a grill. The pain in their faces and half-naked bodies was indistinguishable from the ecstasy, or vice-versa, which in turn was indistinguishable from the peace. Sanitized for sensitive audiences, their blood dripped from their wounds like sap from a maple tree, as though it were something that could be tapped for the faithful masses. Their suffering was almost sexual, if only in the way it was portrayed by an artist’s lewd eye.

Those images captured his attention so completely that he didn’t tear his eyes away at first when the bed dipped beside him. His pupils were fixated on the vivid brown blood of the stigmata until he felt Mitani’s hair tickle his skin and his lips brush against his ear.

Izuru closed his eyes. Those kisses along the side of his face were like a worshiper's. His body’s response was immediate.

“That’s terrible,” he mumbled.

“What is?”

“You kiss me and I get an erection, just like that.”

“It’s just the physiological response to a specific stimulus,” Mitani said quietly against his skin. “The feeling triggers pleasure centers in the brain, which signal the blood vessels to open, making you feel. . . .”

“Hard,” Izuru finished for him.

“I was going to say ‘warm.’”

Izuru tilted his head, allowing Mitani a wider canvas of neck to paint with his lips. “Maybe you should have been a professor of biology instead.”

“Too much work,” Mitani replied dryly, to which Izuru smiled. “Not enough passion. Why? Are you not confident enough in my knowledge of Christian history.”

The desire in his voice seemed so incongruous with the matter-of-fact things of which he spoke, and Izuru found it too difficult to concentrate on his actual words. He reached down, undoing the buttons of his uniform jacket, his heart quickening its beat in anticipation as he chided Mitani gently, “You know my dozing in class has nothing to do with your teaching style, right?”

Mitani let out a sharp breath against his throat in place of a laugh.

“I don’t want anyone else, though,” Izuru said so quietly he wondered if Mitani even heard it. Izuru half hoped he hadn't; it was too candid a confession even for him.

He turned onto his back, laying his head at the base of the pillow, and Mitani’s hand slipped under his jacket. It curled around his waist as Mitani kissed his mouth, and Izuru arched his back to let the shirt tails be tugged out of his trousers' waistband. Some more practical part of his mind made him reach out a blind hand and close the art book, and push it away from their bodies.

They had both expected that the return to class would make it more difficult for them to spend evenings together. Between their respective workloads and the vigilant eye of the dorm chief, there was plenty to stand between them and the fulfillment of their desires. In hindsight, however, to expect them to slow down was like expecting an addict to give up his vice in one night. In reality, the care they were forced by circumstances to take now only made Izuru more bold and more desperate when they were with one another.

Being slowly stripped of his clothing, Izuru smiled to himself at what seemed to be a preoccupation of Mitani’s with his school uniform. It could have been an unconscious fetish, or an act of defilement. An act of rebellion against the school and all it stood for, perhaps. That was how it felt to Izuru, at least. He relished that feeling, clung to it as though it were his lifesaver in the dark waters of the religious and educational establishment. He wanted the world to change to black and white around him, like each one of Father Robert's sermons that only made him feel more and more justified in despising that establishment and its rules, which told him it was wrong to want Mitani like this. If only the wrath of God Himself intervened, Izuru thought, then maybe Mitani would realize what they were and embrace it as Izuru had.

They were heretics forced into this hidden way of life for their self-preservation, and if Mitani doubted things had changed any in the last thousand years, he need only have dropped a hint to a colleague to watch his life collapse around him. Mitani’s room was the only place where they could touch that world that was forbidden in safety, if only for a moment, and even the stifled sound of their breathing seemed to acknowledge it. There they were sinners, but at least they were sinners together.

Mitani reached between them, sliding his hand up the inside of Izuru’s thigh, tracing his inseam; and Izuru smiled a devilish smile against his teacher’s lips. His fingers tangled in Mitani’s hair, and as the man pulled away Izuru caught a glimpse of the seriousness in his meek, downcast eyes—so undeserving of Izuru's murmured “Pervert,” cut off with a moan as Mitani buried his face in the plane of Izuru’s stomach.

The warm breaths Mitani exhaled and the lazy brush of his lips were an incredibly lewd sensation that made Izuru shiver. The muscles under his skin tensed and relaxed like ripples on the water under Mitani’s mouth. He was radiating heat like a sun encased in a shell, and it was this natural idol that Mitani felt himself compelled to worship—not instead of God, but not in opposition to Him, who had made it, either. Youth was simply like that. It demanded of the beholder to get down on his knees and praise it. The slight musky scent of sweat that entered Mitani’s nostrils as he unbuttoned Izuru’s trousers was that scent of the spring of adolescence, the muffled but strong pulse under the skin the beat of that vitality. It was that essence Mitani needed desperately to cling to, as though if he did not, his own youth would fall away like blossoms in a rain shower.

It was selfish of him, but Izuru would have been a hypocrite to begrudge him that. If he knew anything, it was the difference between love and pure, uncomplicated lust; and he could not say that he did not covet every thrust of Mitani's hips just as surely as his professor eagerly devoured each one of his cries of pleasure. Izuru impatiently urged him, “Deeper,” “Harder,” as though Mitani could possibly do either one. The fingertips digging into Mitani's shoulder as they moved together felt like they would leave bruises, and the way Izuru knit his brows and bit his lip and took the Lord's name in vain in so many ways—like the images of the saints in the book, his rapture lay in a gray area between agony and ecstasy.

Izuru could only stand the friction of Mitani both inside his body and against him for so long. He came violently, and bit Mitani’s lower lip simply because it happened to be there, tasting blood. Taking it as a hint, Mitani began to pull out of his embrace, his limbs shaking and breath ragged from being left unsatisfied, but “Don’t stop now” Izuru managed between breaths, lifting his hips to draw them back together, and Mitani obeyed, his blood sinking like the Eucharist wine into Izuru's tongue. . . .

“Maybe we should,” Mitani said some time later, pausing in the buttoning of his shirt. “Maybe we should stop this.”  
It happened at least once a week, usually on the days the whole school attended afternoon mass. It was almost a joke, because they never did. But it worried Izuru each time his teacher became suddenly religious, and caused that same mysterious spark of resentment to flare up within him again.

“Why?” he said at one point. “If it’s sin you’re worried about, we’ve already done enough of that for a lifetime. Who will care if we keep doing this forever?” He was only expressing the kind of sentiment pervaded by so many of his peers who had no real thought for the future, but it turned out to be the wrong thing to say.

Rather than respond, Mitani turned away and retrieved his trousers from where they had been discarded on the floor at the end of the bed, as though in doing so Izuru might somehow fail to notice the anguish he only expressed at times like those with every fiber of his being.

He chided Izuru when, a few days later, instead of coming to see him at the usual time that evening, and without any word in advance, Izuru waited until after room check and surprised him with a tap on the balcony window. Mitani jumped when he saw Izuru’s dim form standing like a phantom outside in the dark. It was raining lightly, and Izuru’s clothes and hair were damp. But what was worse, Mitani wasn’t sure how he had climbed his way along the outside of the apartment building without mishap.

“What are you doing?” Mitani hissed at him after the window was shut tight once again. “You’re taking an awful risk here, Izuru.”

“Don’t worry so much,” Izuru said without a care. “No one saw me.”

“I mean you could have been seriously injured. If you fell, from up here, you could have— Did you ever think about that? Not to mention you’re soaked. Are you trying to catch pneumonia?”

Even as he was saying so, Izuru was busy shedding his uniform jacket, splotchy from the rain, and pulling out a chair to hang it over. He just smiled easily at Mitani's concern. “It’s no big deal, Sensei. Not when I get to see you like this.”

Nevertheless, “You can’t stay, no matter how much trouble you went through to get here.”

“I thought you would be glad. This way we can be together all night. I’ll slip out in the morning before anyone else is awake, before Professor N’s wife can even water her roses—”

“This is a bad idea,” Mitani groaned.

“Why? I have everything worked out.”

“You know why. If anything—just one little thing doesn’t go according to your plan and one of the faculty finds out, I’ll be fired in an instant. Then what will you do?”

“I’ll escape from this place and come see you,” Izuru said automatically, so that Mitani sighed. If he hadn’t known Izuru so well by now, it would have been almost comical.

“You’re not getting my point. I don’t want to be fired, Izuru. I don’t want to lose my ability to teach. It’s my life. And teaching Christian history at Saint Michel was my dream.”

“And you’re so sure that’s going to end? Sensei, what about me? How could I possibly let that happen?”

“Then you have to be more careful than this.” Mitani ran a shaky hand through his hair. He wished there were some way to impress upon Izuru the importance of that, but the way the boy rolled his eyes it was like talking to a wall. He knew Izuru didn’t want to hear it, but he had to stress again: “We should stop.”

Izuru narrowed his eyes. “You always say that.”

“Be realistic for a minute, Izuru. In another year you’re going to be studying at a university in Tokyo or someplace, and I’ll be here and both of us will have forgotten all about this whole thing. It’s just a physical curiosity. That’s what we both agreed on. An experiment, something to pass the time. Right? It’s not like it means anything—”

“But I love you, Sensei!”

Izuru was startled by his own outburst. He did not know where that admission had come from, it seemed so alien to his own ears. The Izuru he knew didn’t love anyone. That Izuru only wanted and received.

That was what he had told himself, anyway. That was the belief to which Mitani wanted so desperately to cling.

“No.” He shook his head, as though in doing so he could make Izuru's words go away. “No you don’t. How can you know what love is?”

“I . . . I didn’t think I did,” Izuru stuttered. “But I’m telling the truth.”

But neither of them could quite believe him.

“Look,” he began again after a while, “I don’t care if you don’t feel the same way. That’s not why I started all this. But don’t try to tell me now that you can just turn off whatever you do feel that easily. You’re as deep in this as I am—”

“Then, if only for that reason, you must see the sense in putting an end to it. For both our sakes.”

“No, I don’t! Stop meeting in order to protect our meetings? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“And if someone found us out and I had to leave, what would you do then?”

“If that happened,” Izuru said the only thing he felt sincerely, “I think I would die.”

Mitani turned his head. “Don’t be melodramatic—”

“I’m not.” And he wasn’t. Even though he tried to deny whatever feelings had caused him to call this love, this was the one truth he had known with certainty all along. “If I couldn’t see you anymore, I would die.”

It was an ominous thing to say. Mitani cringed to hear it, but not because of that. He didn’t notice the pallor that had come over Izuru’s rain-dampened face, but if he had, perhaps he would have regarded the boy with more than just pity. “Izuru. . . .”

Of all the things to think of dying for, he thought, why do you have to choose me? Why, in God’s name, would you choose me?


	4. Chapter 4

“Tsukiori Kira?”

The headmaster repeated the name aloud to himself as he flipped through files. Sitting in the leather-upholstered chair across the desk, the one he had addressed sat still, with a blank expression. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember seeing your name before or meeting with your parents—”

“It was rather short notice,” Tsukiori said dryly. “I’m sorry about the trouble, but I had to transfer so suddenly because the move was so sudden. ‘Extenuating circumstances’ is the term I believe is appropriate. I cleared it up with registration.”

“Oh . . . here it is.” The expression on the man’s face was still quite uncertain as he looked over the file, as if he had not expected to find it actually existed. “Ah, yes, you’ve been placed in class Two-A. How fortunate for you. Our student council president and vice-president are both in that class.”

“The leaders are second-year students?”

“Yes. It is rather unusual, but they do a superb job, and there were—well, extenuating circumstances.” He handed Tsukiori a card of stock paper and said, “This is your dorm room number and schedule. I think you’ll find your class in Christian history now with Professor Mitani. Maeda volunteered to show you around. He’s a first-year but he knows the campus as well as anyone. If there’s anything else you need . . .”

“Thank you, sir, but I’ll be fine.” Tsukiori’s departing bow was very short.

Maeda was waiting for Tsukiori outside the office. He was a teenager of looks one might endearingly call expressive: an open, honest face, though not particularly attractive, and a demeanor to match that seemed genuinely interested in Tsukiori as he made small talk along the way. It was the new student’s first contact in Saint Michel, and despite Maeda’s big mouth, and the loose lips surrounding it, he appeared to be a very trustworthy person. That was the vibe Tsukiori got from him.

Mitani was in the middle of a lecture on the Lutheran Reformation when the door opened and someone stepped halfway through. The lecture came to a sudden stop. In the silence that followed, the other boys sat up to better see who it was who had interrupted. Mitani said hesitantly, “Can I help you?”

“I’m a recent transfer and this is my first day.” The voice that answered sounded dull and expressionless, and somewhat high. “Are you Professor Mitani?”

“Yes,” Mitani said, a bit uncertainly. Whoever this new student was, it was clear Mitani had not been informed of his arrival. He scratched his head. “Why don't you come in and introduce yourself.”

The person in question stepped up before the podium to face the class; and though there was no sound or movement to indicate it, it was nonetheless clear that all eyes were on the new boy, wondering where he came from.

He had an unusually delicate face: a narrow chin; long, dark dark eyes that looked disinterestedly over their heads; a small mouth and a mole under the left eye. His light hair was cut short in the back and left long in the front to fall like drapery against the sides of his face almost to his shoulders. There was a distinctly feminine quality to his body as well, in his high waist and long, slender legs. He made an attractive image to many of them simply because he could easily have been mistaken for a girl.

His manner, on the other hand, was aloof in a refined and masculine sort of way, like the stuck-up sons of ancient households that only seemed to exist these days in television serials. Everything about his person seemed to say that this place was not worth his time. Izuru wondered in passing if he was one of those occult otaku.

“Tsukiori Kira,” the boy said shortly. “Seventeen, transferred from Nada High School.”

His bow extended only to the neck, and some of the boys stifled laughter at his rudeness. Tsukiori acted as if he did not hear as he remained at the front of the class, hands at his sides, patiently waiting for the teacher to invite him to take a seat. Instead Mitani said uncomfortably, “Is there anything else you’d like us to know about yourself?”

Tsukiori seemed genuinely taken aback by the question. “Eh?”

“For example, what does your family do, what are your interests—”

“I like Christ.” The other students did not bother to hide their amusement. “I’m fairly good at fencing,” he continued, “and I speak Latin fluently and some Greek. I’ve won a number of scripture competitions. Also, I think I would someday like to become a cardinal.”

The other boys fell into an uneasy silence, but it was most likely in disbelief that these types actually existed in the flesh. “Why not go for broke and aim for pope?” someone next to Izuru snickered to himself.

“That’s very impressive,” Mitani said. “You . . . you said you were from which high school again? No, never mind,” he decided at Tsukiori’s sharp look. Since there did not appear to be any questions for the new student, Mitani gestured to the rows of seats and said, “Why don’t you take that desk next to Okazaki.”

Izuru started. What had he done to deserve this, he wanted to ask his professor, though why this student should be any different from the others he had helped out over the years he did not know. Perhaps it was something in the way Mitani’s gaze found Tsukiori every now and then that upset him. It was something in the way Tsukiori looked at Izuru out of the corner of those long eyes that made him feel like his very soul was under close scrutiny—that for once there was someone whose first reaction to him was disgust and suspicion. He avoided returning Tsukiori's gaze and prayed to Mary and the saints that the new boy wouldn’t try to talk to him.

“Who does he think he is?”

Some of the boys from the second-year class had gathered to talk about the new student at lunch, where they felt freer to speak their minds without the classroom constraints of politeness and respect. “He’s like one of those Gothic types, except without all the makeup.”

“Stupid, you don’t need makeup to be goth. It’s prohibited by the school rules anyway.”

“What kind of answer is that: I like Christ? Sounds like a major suck-up if I ever heard one.”

“He doesn't look like a Jesus freak. You think maybe he really worships the Devil? 'Cause I’d believe it.”

“And ‘if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists cast them out?’”

The boys looked up. “Fujisawa—”

But their vice-president just stared past them. “I don’t see what your problem with that guy is,” he said, nodding toward Tsukiori, who sat at the end of a table by himself, reading over his food—which sat mostly untouched—headphones in his ears. “That kind is harmless.”

“I don’t know about that,” said one of the others. “I heard about this other school where a guy like him put a curse on another kid and actually made him sick, even put him in the hospital.”

“Where do you pick up this garbage?” But Fujisawa was only too glad to take up the challenge. As the others watched in anticipation, he went over and set himself down next to Tsukiori, who calmly took off his headphones.

“Sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier,” said Fujisawa, extending a hand. “Fujisawa.”

“You’re the student council vice-president.” Tsukiori ignored the offered hand. “That must be some feat, gaining such a powerful position at your age—from under the asses of tyrants, too, I hear.”

Was that sarcasm Fujisawa detected? If it was, he thought he might just take a liking to this kid. “You’re damn right it was. Look—” Fujisawa leaned in closer. “Kira . . . That’s kind of a girly name, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just the same, somebody might.”

Tsukiori gave him a hard look.

“I just thought I should warn you. It’s my job as student council vice-president, after all, to look out for new students.”

“Warn me about what?”

Fujisawa shrugged. “Deprived adolescent boys who might get the wrong impression about someone with a pretty face like that. Not that we’re that kind of school, but the administrators can’t exactly take responsibility for the actions of a few twisted individuals, especially when that kind of thing is so hard to prove in a court of law.”

“I appreciate the, er, warning, but I think I can take care of myself.” Gathering his belongings and picking up what was left of his lunch, Tsukiori got up and headed toward the exit.

If it was a hint, Fujisawa feigned ignorance and followed. When the doors of the cafeteria closed behind them, and Fujisawa was certain the other second-years would talk even more, he called after the boy: “I don’t think you quite grasp the severity of what I’m telling you. You don’t think there’s any danger in an all boys’ Catholic school, but that would be precisely where you’re wrong. That kind of behavior is practically institutionalized. You can’t even trust the priests these days.”

He grabbed Tsukiori’s arm, but had not counted on the other boy’s reflexes being so fast. He threw Fujisawa off of himself with a strength that belied his delicate frame, the back of his hand narrowly missing Fujisawa’s face, and his voice retained its strange calmness as he said, “Then maybe it’s I who should be warning you. If you touch me again you can be sure to regret it. Unless you have some urgent desire to feel your body consumed in an unholy pain the likes of which you can’t even begin to imagine, I wouldn’t recommend it. You can tell your ‘twisted individuals’ that for me and save us all a lot of trouble.”

Fujisawa couldn’t help grinning as he watched the newcomer go. Tsukiori was someone he could respect for his gall, even if he inherently hated the type. If only there were some way he could set him against Okazaki.

* * *

“There’s something very wrong here.”

That was what Tsukiori Kira repeated in a low voice meant for no one but the speaker. No one else was there to hear it: The room’s other occupant was busy elsewhere, leaving Tsukiori to finish unpacking in peace. It was the kind of thing one says to spur a brainstorm—to coax out some conclusion that was slow in forming but could with the right stimulus strike at any moment, like a bolt of lightning. Something that needed to be grasped, but Tsukiori, who had come to Saint Michel for just that purpose, was so far coming up empty.

What was certain were these details. The demon lord Ashtaroth was concerned for the fate of his new Brigade Commander, a human who had defeated Surgatanus after he broke the rules of his own pact. Knowing how prone to jealousy his subjects were, and how resentful of humankind, Ashtaroth had asked a favor of Tsukiori—a devil making a pact with an exorcist—to keep a close eye on those who would be coming for Surgatanus’ usurper’s life, against their lord’s command. It was a vague task, to track down possible perpetrators before they made their moves with no solid information that might indicate when they might strike. Even if there were rogue devils to be apprehended, there was no guarantee someone would not get hurt before Tsukiori could identify them.

But the man they were after was a shinigami assigned to Kyushu. Any rivals would attack there. After months of searching, Tsukiori had finally narrowed a possible target down to this school: Saint Michel’s Christian preparatory school for boys. The place sounded perfectly ripe to one in the know for demonic interference: its Gothic spires the closest a fallen angel could come to Heaven, with a plethora of potential god-fearing victims to choose from, if a devil wanted a real tasty challenge. A possession here would constitute a virtual “fuck you” in the face of God.

So now, how to discover the devil’s identity, Tsukiori thought, absently fingering an ornate dagger with a starburst guard. That part was easier said than done. For every devil that wanted its identity known, there were a dozen more who would hide it at all costs. Odds favored this one belonging to the latter category. . . .

Nonetheless, the fact remained: Something was wrong here. Out of place. Tsukiori felt that clearly. It was in the air, in the musty buildings. The local animal life knew it. No one was free of suspicion.

Hinoki did knock when he came to the door of the new second-year student’s room to introduce himself, but he did not wait for an answer before he pushed open the door. “Room check,” he began to say, well aware that it was the wrong time of day. But he stopped himself short.

Tsukiori had turned naturally at the intrusion. He had removed his jacket some time ago, and in the brief moment Hinoki was allowed, the third-year was struck by the queer feeling that something was wrong with this picture. Tsukiori made an androgynous enough boy as it was, and things did sometimes look different in the angled light of a winter afternoon; but Hinoki swore he wasn’t mistaken in catching the faint roundness of small breasts under the other's white shirt, and a figure to match that was decidedly un-masculine.

Both parties started. Tsukiori regained his composure first and, shoving the dagger under a pile of clothing, grabbed the jacket from the bed and shrugged it on with haste.

Hinoki could only manage a dumbstruck, “What the hell—”

“Don’t you people respect your fellow students’ privacy here at all?” Tsukiori snapped at him over a shoulder.

“But you’re—”

“What the hell are you doing here, anyway? What’s so important you couldn’t knock first?”

“I did knock,” Hinoki said. “I just came by to introduce myself and inform you of the rules of the dorms. You know, extend some Christian hospitality? I’m Hinoki in Three-B, the dorm chief here.”

Mentally, Tsukiori cursed. What luck. . . .

“Hey,” Hinoki said in a lower voice. “Are you really the new student in Two-A? You’re not shitting me, are you? Or is there some sort of special arrangement no one told me about?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tsukiori said with a glare, deciding it couldn’t hurt too much to play ignorant. How much could the third-year have really seen in one second? He wore glasses, besides, for God’s sake, so his eyesight was poor to begin with. “And you needn’t have wasted your time. I’m already caught up on the rules.”

“Forget that,” Hinoki snorted. “I’m talking about you being a girl!”

Tsukiori shot him a look to chill him to the bones.

“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” the third-year continued sarcastically, “but this is an _all-boys_ school.”

“Again. I don’t know what you’re talking about. As far as I can see, _I’m_ not the one with the problem here.”

Hinoki didn’t get the hint. He stayed put. “Okay. Whatever you say. A guy with breasts seems awful strange to me, but maybe where you come from—”

“Are you one of those perverts,” Tsukiori glared, “that Fujisawa warned me about?”

“Fujisawa?” A disgusted look crossed the dorm chief’s features. “First off, I’m not into men, if that’s what you’re getting at. And _that_ asshole’s probably this place’s number-one pervert. You know what he’s been telling the other guys about you, don’t you? The first-years are already terrified you’d put a curse on anyone you think might be more beautiful than you.”

Tsukiori smiled at that. “And what makes you think he’s making it up?”

“Come on. Some of the younger guys might be that gullible, but when you’ve heard as much as I have, you tend to develop a pretty good ear for bullshit. So what’s yours?”

“Let’s see. Once upon a time, there was something that was none of your business. Now get out of my room.”

Rather than depart, Hinoki leaned in closer. “Watch who you’re talking to. It’s my job as dorm chief to butt in on your affairs, no reason necessary. I could make your life here very difficult if I wanted to.”

“Sounds like a fun job,” Tsukiori said with a tilt of the head. “It seems to come with all sorts of benefits.”

“See? Now you’re getting it,” said Hinoki. “A smart guy like you must understand what could happen if word got around, in an all-boys school, that he wasn’t really a guy after all. It’d be pretty hard to keep something like that a secret.”

Maybe it would have been only natural for a person with something to hide—as Tsukiori without a doubt did—to be intimidated by a threat as underhanded as Hinoki’s. Instead, Tsukiori’s refined features lit up at the appearance of a challenge worthy of the new student's calibre.

“Well then, I’ll give you some time to think it over,” came the response that by all rights should have been Hinoki’s.

* * *

The Chinese New Year, the start of spring on the lunar calendar, fell on a Friday that year, and the class captains had used the opportunity to appeal to the student council to make some sort of affair of it.

“Stick some plum branches in a vase and call it done,” Fujisawa said, smiling bitterly for the boy who was taking their pictures for some club project or another.

Ignoring his sarcasm, Izuru said, “The various clubs can use the commons to set up booths. It might be a good time to start recruiting members for next year. And on top of that, we should probably start thinking of Ash Wednesday next week.”

“Huh?” Fujisawa sat up and took notice at that. “It’s almost Lent already?” He looked somewhat disappointed. “I guess I hadn’t been keeping track.”

“Has anyone seen Hinoki? He usually at least tells us if he isn't going to show up for a meeting.”

“Haven’t you heard?” said one of the younger boys, his eyes wide. “He’s not dorm chief anymore.”

“What do you mean?” said Izuru. Fujisawa turned his attention toward them.

“That new guy, Tsukiori, beat him.” It was the freckled first-year, Maeda, who said it. “Tsukiori really did a number on him. You should have seen it!”

Maeda proceeded to tell them how it had gone down, play by play. He had seen the dorm chief confront Tsukiori, who was studying on a bench in the school yard, and guessed Hinoki was just pushing his weight around with the underclassmen as per his usual daily routine. To Maeda’s incredible surprise, Tsukiori had almost seemed to smile like the two of them were on friendly terms. They talked for a minute or two, but somewhere things turned sour. That was when the dorm chief reached out to grab him, and Tsukiori went off, and in no time had Hinoki pinned with a bloody nose.

“Most of us are betting he didn’t really break Hinoki’s nose like Hinoki said he did, but it sure scared the crap out of him at first. For such a slight guy, Tsukiori sure knows how to throw a punch. Some of the other guys thought maybe he put a hex on Hinoki or something. I mean, that guy is ice cold!”

“What, are you in love with him or something?” Fujisawa sneered.

“Not in love _with_. . . .” Maeda blushed. What went unsaid was that by defeating Hinoki, the strange new student was no longer an outsider. It took a moment for the truth to sink in for the remaining student council leaders, and it did not cheer them up any to realize that they would now be seeing a lot more of Tsukiori, much more than either of them ever wanted.

“It’s just such a chivalrous thing to do, you know?” Maeda was more or less talking to himself at that point. “That kind of honorable, _mano-y-mano_ stuff you really don’t see much of nowadays. Trumping Hinoki in a duel—”

That one word broke the spell.

“Duel?” said Fujisawa.

“So, Tsukiori’s the new dorm chief.” Izuru’s spirits sank. “Is there any chance he doesn't know about the rules?”

“It does count as a duel according to the council rules, doesn’t it?” said Maeda. “It looked like Hinoki did challenge him in a way. I can’t be sure if it was mutual. I mean, it could have been more self-defense, but—”

“Christ, Maeda, shut up,” Fujisawa said, which the first-year quickly did. As the photographer turned away, taking a starry-eyed Maeda with him, the vice-president leaned in toward Izuru. “Well, how bad can it really be? I guess so long as Hinoki is out of the picture, I don’t care who’s dorm chief.”

But even he couldn’t manage to say so without an unconvincing growl. Izuru crossed his arms. “I suppose. The way things stand now, the entire student body is under Two-A’s control. . . .”

“But you don’t like him.”

Izuru looked at him. “Don’t tell me you do. There’s something about that guy that creeps me out. I can’t explain it.”

“He creeps everyone out. Are you sure it isn’t jealousy?”

“What reason would I have to be jealous?”

Both were thinking of Tsukiori’s looks, and of Mitani, but neither dared say so out loud. Instead, Izuru said, “You’d just better hope he’s not the ambitious type.”

“You and me both.”

“Excuse me.”

They both looked up. Tsukiori had his knuckles poised at the open door. Maeda and his friends turned to him with bated breath. The boy with the camera raised it as if to take a picture, but, word of curses getting around the student body, he couldn’t bring himself to do so without an invitation and lowered it again.

The new student’s long eyes held a look of superiority his classmates hated instantly as he asked no one in particular, “Is this where the student council meets?”

“Maybe,” said Fujisawa. “What's it to you?”

“I’m the dorm chief now, aren’t I? I thought I should introduce myself properly if I'm going to be spending a good deal of my time here.”

Fujisawa started, but if Izuru was taken aback by Tsukiori's brashness he gave no sign. “That depends. Did you know about the rules of succession for student council members before hand, or are you just taking advantage of them after the fact? Dorm chief is an important position. We can’t have anyone just fall into it accidentally. When did you find out about our rules?”

“You mean the clause about duels?” Tsukiori shrugged. “I did some research last night. I wanted to know just what kind of world I was going to be living in for the next year.”

Fujisawa snorted at that but held his tongue.

“Fujisawa,” Tsukiori said, suddenly turning to the other boy. “I should thank you for you warning yesterday. You were right: Saint Michel is full of all sorts of people eager to take advantage of an innocent newcomer. Frankly, I find it all rather intriguing, the way your hierarchy has been constructed here. It’s so Machiavellian it’s almost biblical, don't you think?”

Fujisawa’s sneer wavered.

Who was this guy, Izuru thought not for the first time, and why the hell did he have to come here, of all places? “Okay, then,” he sighed. “We’ll get you a record of all the dorm residents. Since you seem so well rehearsed in the student body rules, I’m sure you know what your new responsibilities are already. We shouldn’t have to tell you anything. You can get started tonight.”

“Hey, maybe you can knock some of that old-time religion you're so keen on into them while you’re at it,” Fujisawa added with an embarrassing amount of sarcasm.

“Maybe someone should,” Tsukiori answered just as coolly, boldly meeting his gaze.

As he watched the sparks fly between his two classmates, Izuru could easily say there was something about that boy who called himself Tsukiori Kira that made him very anxious. He would not have been able to say what it was if one asked him, because the truth was he did not know himself. It was simply a feeling, a gut instinct that told him Tsukiori was dangerous and a threat. More so than the threat some of his underclassmen fancied he was, practicing black arts in dark corners of the school grounds, or speaking to angels.

But what he was a threat to, that Izuru only wished he knew. At the moment, it was simply a feeling he could not explain nor shake, like a cold draft on the back of his neck. It was more than the uncomfortable feeling of being watched—of looking up by chance and seeing Tsukiori staring in his odd, omnipotent way from an upper-storey classroom window, or having that brooding presence beside him each day in class—and he only prayed that if Tsukiori did have any unusual powers like the rumor mill claimed, reading minds was not one of them.

* * *

It was already late when Izuru awoke. He knew that much without checking the time. It couldn’t be helped when they fell asleep after sex, and Izuru ended up rushing back for room check at fifteen or so past ten o’clock; but now that Tsukiori had taken over as dorm chief, he was trying to be more careful. Izuru chided himself mentally for being so sloppy. Groggily opening his eyes, he realized it was a sound like waves that had shaken him from his sleep. It was too loud to ignore, and he wondered when Mitani had opened a window.

When his vision came back into focus, however, it was the slow circulation of shiny black scales that he saw hovering in the darkness before him. The breath on his cheek was hot and humid, and stank of disease and pollution.

Izuru froze in fear. He dared not turn his head and confirm that the presence in the room with him was real—that the creature of his nightmares had returned—but against his will he found the wide glowing eyes staring at him. It felt as though they were boring right through his skull, and even if he were not so terrified and could close his eyes, he would find them peering back at him from behind his eyelids. Like the facets of a diamond, every surface seemed to reflect that terrible visage, and Izuru was all too aware that even his own thoughts were not safe from that creature's all-seeing gaze. _I-zu-ru . . ._ it whispered his name, coaxing him to turn and look at it.

“Stop it,” he said through gritted teeth. “Go away.”

“ _Izuru. . . ._ ” Each syllable was agony for the thing to speak. “ _Why do you ignore me?_ ”

“Leave me alone!”

In response, a low murmur issued from the creature, like the two-fold rumble and hiss of a strong wind through the branches of trees, filling his ears with nothing else but that sound. Fragments of words coalesced slowly from that murmuring hush, as alien as a Buddhist chant but infinitely more powerful. Izuru could not understand what they meant, yet he knew they were sinful, that they were blasphemy. They were words of judgment reserved for the aeons that mortal beings such as he were never meant to hear.

He lashed out, desperate to push the devil away from him; but instead of the hard, scaled body he expected to hit, his hands touched nothing but air. Surprised, he looked, and immediately wished he had not. His hands had sunk into the flesh of the creature's throat, encountering no resistance, but when he pulled them away, they were covered with a sticky black ichor. His breath caught in his throat. Panicking, anxious to escape, to demolish that diabolical image, he pushed harder against it. His arm sank in up to the elbow. More of that awful substance, like tar and viscera, gushed from its wound, clinging to his skin, absorbing into him. Severed veins encircled his arm, searching for a hold, drawing him inward as though they would consume him whole. He tried his utmost to pull free, but his other hand only peeled away pieces of the creature’s flesh, which slipped off like slabs of clay mud.

Izuru felt he was going to be sick. There were no sweet-scented apricots here, no lilacs; the stench of death and decay overwhelmed everything else. Black, oily blood rolled in rivulets down the creature’s scales, from its torn fins, out of the tiny holes of its ears and nostrils. It oozed from its phallic fish-tongue to fill and overflow the cavity of the jaw, dripping down onto Izuru’s bare stomach. For the second time he could remember, a genuine fear of pain and death gripped him. He squirmed to get away, only to feel the monster’s coils burst behind him under his weight, and the quagmire of its innards surge up to ensnare him.

He looked around wildly. Mitani was gone, as was the bed and everything else that had been in his room. Nothing existed but the darkness and the ichor—and the creature who bled it. Izuru tried to yell, but no sound would leave his constricted throat. Nor could he find any words with which to defend himself. It was as if he were being drowned, choked, his lungs unable to expand and epiglottis stuck, though nothing restricted him.

Nothing but the look in the creature’s eyes that frightened him to his soul. It was a wild look, a desperation more animal than even that which he felt himself to escape—the complete irrational bloodlust of a thing hungry and dying. He watched with horror as the creature’s gaze followed the black trail of blood and saliva it had left down the length of Izuru's body. There was nothing else he could do but watch as it lowered its head and dislocated its jaw with a sickening pop. Its needle-like teeth sank deep and greedily into Izuru's side, and he couldn’t cry out. The pain was too incredible to bear—

And then he opened his eyes.

The room—Mitani’s room—slowly came back into focus. Izuru's heart was beating painfully fast, so much so he thought it might burst from the pressure. The sound of his own blood pumping in his ears echoed like a booming subwoofer in his head. He was almost too afraid to look, but when he did, was relieved and mystified to find Mitani was still beside him, sleeping soundly on his stomach. Though Izuru could still feel where the creature’s teeth had penetrated his body, he remained whole and unmarred except by the signs of that evening’s pleasure and a faint redness that, for all he knew, could have been caused by anything. For all appearances, the horror that had felt so real only moments ago had been only a dream.

But that knowledge did nothing to console Izuru. He shot out of bed and hurried to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He splashed cold water on his face, but he remained reluctant to look up and meet his own reflection in the mirror in case he should see something there besides his own reflection.

“It was just a dream,” he told himself between shaking breaths. “It isn’t real. It can’t be.” But he had dreamed of the same creature twice now, and the same voice calling his name so seductively. And both times it had seemed more real than this did now.

 _Izuru, listen to me!_

“No!” he cried, and clasped his hands over his ears as he backed up against the wall. He wanted so much to block out the voice, to convince himself it was a hallucination, but it was no use. It was coming from inside, in his own voice, as though they were his own thoughts. Except that he had no control over them. He could not will or rationalize them away.

 _Why do you ignore me?_ it asked him as it had in the dream. _Why do you continue to deny me? I thought we were kindred spirits, you and I. I gave you what you wanted, did I not? And this is how you repay me, you arrogant, selfish boy, by denying my existence? You ungrateful—_

“Go away, go away!” Izuru whispered. He lowered himself to the bathroom floor.

 _I cannot—I will not go away. I am a part of you now, Izuru. Yours is the only body I have. Do you not remember? We had a deal—_

You’re wrong, he thought. I wouldn’t make a deal with a thing like that.

But the devil-Izuru chuckled. _You did, though perhaps you do not remember it. What do you say? Shall I refresh your memory?_

Afraid of what that might entail, Izuru pressed the heels of his palms to his temples. “Then I take it back.” He wanted so much for this to be a dream. “I’m not the same person I was when you found me.” But inside his own mind he could sense the devil’s doubt. “I got this far by myself and by my own efforts. I became student council leader with no help from you. I don’t need you.”

 _Are you certain about that? Are you willing to chance it? Shall I take back our little agreement right now, so you can see for yourself whether Sensei’s affections remain without me? Would you like to find out if he will still want you after I open his eyes completely to the sin he has committed? It is quite a gamble you’re taking, Izuru, but by all means, let us see if it’s really of his own free will he allows himself to be loved by you. I can do that much for you, if you think it will allay your doubts—_

No! Izuru’s heart cried out, and a very real fear gripped him: fear that maybe he was wrong and the voice right, that Mitani’s feelings for him were no more than a delusion, a spell his professor was under. Fear of being rejected in totality by the one person who seemed to truly care about him, and the only person he had ever cared about himself. Only now did he realize he had dug himself a hole too deep to climb back out of. Maybe he was right, and the devil had nothing to do with Mitani’s wanting him—but did he want to know the truth of the matter only after Mitani was gone? Izuru would never be able to stand that. If he lost Mitani . . . “I wouldn't want to live if that happened.”

 _I knew you would see sense,_ said the devil. _After all, I coveted you above all others because you were an intelligent young man._

“Why are you doing this to me?” Izuru whispered, his fingers tangled in his hair so hard the roots ached.

 _You are forgetting who put you here. You’re forgetting your servant._ The devil paused for a moment as though in indecision, then said more bitterly than before, all but spitting out the name: _That Tsukiori Kira makes me nervous. Feels familiar somehow. We shall have to keep an eye on him._

“Why?”

But the devil would say nothing more, leaving Izuru utterly alone with his unanswered questions. My servant, he thought—more like a master to whom he was a slave. But in the back of his mind Izuru knew he would gradually forget this too, just as he had all but forgotten their first encounter. How was he supposed to remember what to do if the memory of their pact faded from his mind? Would he lose Mitani because of something he could not control? Getting to his feet and looking in the mirror, Izuru was almost surprised to see his reflection staring back unchanged. It could have all been his imagination, he thought, but. . . .

 _But._

When he came out of the bathroom, the creak of the door in its jamb made Mitani stir. He opened his eyes groggily as Izuru began to pick his clothes up from the floor. “Izuru . . . what are you doing?”

“I have to get back to my room,” Izuru said. He tugged on his shirt. “It’s late. I think I overslept.”

As he sat up and yawned, Mitani glanced at the digital clock. “It’s only eight thirty-seven.”  
Izuru started. That meant he had only been out ten, fifteen minutes at the most. Yet it had seemed so much longer. It had felt like a lifetime.

“You still have more than an hour before curfew.” Coming up behind him, Mitani placed his hands on Izuru’s waist, burying his nose and lips in the meeting of Izuru’s shoulder and neck. He felt heavy. “You can stay a little while longer. Come shower with me?” he murmured lustfully.

Izuru still remembered the warmth he had felt in his gut, creeping into the shower the other night and surprising Mitani—the smile that had appeared on his professor’s lips then as the water dripped into his eyes. Strange how even that could not banish his sudden disgust. This behavior was not like Mitani. It was not his professor talking to him like this. It was a point being proven.

Izuru pulled away, perhaps a bit too abruptly. “No, I have to leave now,” he said, and continued to dress himself with haste. He just hoped Mitani did not notice the slight waver in his voice as he said so. The last thing Izuru wanted was to have to explain himself and make the dream real all over again. “I just remembered I have some homework I need to finish before tomorrow.”

“All right.” Mitani hesitated before saying, not without sounding a bit hurt, “I guess I’ll see you in class, then.”

On a whim Izuru stopped by the library before heading back to the dorm. Avoiding the glances of classmates who were studying before bed, he checked out a book on psychology. Even as his shaking fingers trailed over the spines of the books on the shelf he was reluctant to pull any one out, in the end only driven to do so by a sense of great urgency. He had to know whether something was wrong with him. Schizophrenia? Some kind of personality disorder? There were stories of people with brain tumors affecting their dreams and behavior, even producing hallucinations of demons. It had to be something like that.

Whatever it was, he was afraid to take his problem to the school’s nurse, and it wasn’t like there was anyone else he could trust to take him seriously. Mitani would turn him away for good if he knew, if he didn't try to help Izuru himself. No, Izuru felt sick at the mere thought.

* * *

The rules that govern student alliances are so tacit and transient, based on nothing and everything, and changing with the wind. Thus, no one could say for sure, but it seemed that power had shifted within the student body once again. The prince of class 2-A, it seemed, the Father of the profane trinity that was the Saint Michel student council, had lost his crown, and it was Fujisawa to whom the boys looked with awe now, from whom a word was enough to damn or save a fellow student. How was it that Okazaki Izuru could have lost his once unshakable hold? Where was the confidence which the professors still naively believed pulled the strings that kept the boys in moral order if not in the combined cunning and unflinching laying down of the law by his vice-president and dorm chief?

Consequently, as the days passed, the tension in class 2-A seemed to be building to some sort of head. Again, if asked, no one would have been able to say why it seemed that way. It just did.

Things had taken an interesting turn since Tsukiori usurped Hinoki. It was the dorm chief’s job to see and hear everything, down to the curl of cigarette smoke in the washrooms and the buzz of wasp wings in the eaves—to deal out punishment for breaking the rules and accept bribes for looking the other way. In that way, Tsukiori fulfilled his position no different than anyone else would. And yet there was something different about him. Perhaps it was the way he drifted about the dorms with a dark humor, distant from students and faculty alike—the way he seemed to be on a different plane mentally, or how he extolled warnings to offenders without appearing to care in the least that was downright creepy. His silent, unreadable gaze was everywhere and saw everything, making it difficult for anyone, including Izuru and Fujisawa, to continue to keep their secret goings-on secret. Yet somehow they did. At least, so they thought.

Fujisawa must have been plotting something. That was what Izuru came to suspect once again. By turns the bitter glances and knowing smiles were turned in one of his fellow officers’ direction, then the other. Fujisawa would lean over across the aisle and whisper something to a student he had rarely deigned to speak to in the past, or sit down at the first-year table where the boys who participated in various team sports would coagulate, looking out of the corner of his eye at Izuru as he spoke to them in good spirits. The confidence with which he now leaned back in his seat or held himself when he stood to leave was, if it were possible, even more annoying than ever before.

Of course, it was impossible not to hear the rumors. Nor was it difficult to deduce who had been encouraging them. The student council officers were after a bigger prize than power over the school, the student body said. They were after a particular person. Some said a man. And some simply laughed and professed not to believe a word of it. Others, first- and third-years in the know, thought a competition like that was precisely in Okazaki and Fujisawa’s natures, and wondered about Tsukiori’s more feminine qualities. But who could say how deeply they really took anything on faith.

Despite this, day by day Izuru retreated further into himself. Funny how a year ago he would have loved to have had such things said about him. He would have been quite amused by it. Even a few months ago he would have jumped at the opportunity to have a _real_ contest of this caliber between himself and Fujisawa. Now all he could do was deny the rumors and treat them as though they warranted no serious consideration whatsoever—and simply hope they grew stale and went away. He could not erase the idea from everyone’s mind now that it was implanted, but he could do his utmost to pretend there was no truth to the rumor whatsoever, and hope Mitani did the same.

It must be paranoia, he told himself, an honest-to-God anxiety disorder, this spell he had fallen under of late, and he willed himself to forget the whole matter. Forget the possibility he might lose Mitani, or be beaten by Fujisawa and that anti-social Tsukiori. Forget the possibility of going back to being a nonentity, not even class captain. . . . It was useless. Slowly he felt himself being driven out of his head. He couldn’t concentrate on a single lecture, and with exams approaching, it was bound to show. Like a hopeless addict, he could do nothing anymore but hang on until such time as he could be with Mitani again, and forget about everything that was unpleasant or bothersome in his world. . . .

Izuru winced as a sharp pain stabbed the palm of his left hand. He glanced down. A dark red bead of blood was growing slowly in the center of his palm from where he had inadvertently stabbed it with the point of the paper clip he had been playing with. When had he picked that up, he wondered. For that matter, how long had he had it there in his hands, unfolding it and digging it into his skin? Red welts showed where he had dragged the sharp point over his flesh, but until it broke the surface he had not been aware of what he was doing in the slightest.

He flexed his hand, watching with fascination as the bit of blood expanded and then spilled itself out into a crease in the skin. It was more fascinating than his professor's dry lecture on Meiji literature, this tiny self-made stigmata, the way it shone. Like a fleck of garnet in rock, neither red nor black. It hadn’t hurt either, beyond that first tiny prick. Not really.

It made Mitani pause while he was trailing his lips along the underside of Izuru’s wrist. His mouth was a thin line as he clenched his jaw tight, prompting Izuru to ask what he was looking at.

“How did that happen?” Mitani asked him.

“How did what happen, Sensei?”

“These cuts on your arm. Did you run into something?”

At the furrow in Izuru's brow, he turned the boy’s wrist to him manually, and Izuru saw what he was talking about. It was difficult to make out in the dark, but just as Mitani had said, there were red cuts on the inside of his arm, the skin around them still freshly raised and pink. He had no idea how they got there, but saw the worry that had come over his professor’s face and had to exorcise it.

“Yeah, ah,” he began, “I scraped it on the gym door. The latch is sharp, you know, if you hit it at the right angle. They really should do something about that.”

Mitani said nothing more on the subject, though every now and then Izuru caught him staring at some bruise or other that he had no explanation for himself.

* * *

“Let us pray.”

As one, the students and faculty members gathered in the chapel bowed their heads at Father Robert’s words, and prayed silently where they stood. Perhaps there were some boys among them who were otherwise religious who wondered if they were alone in using the time to think of other things; and perhaps there were some who hardly took anything seriously whose minds were seriously focused on their wishes reaching God. After a short time, Robert said, “Amen,” and they echoed it, making the sign of the cross and sitting.

At that time, one of the professors rose from the front row and went to the podium. “A reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans,” he began, then recited:

“For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.”

Recognizing the passage, Mitani was startled where he sat. He knew that chapter particularly well, had repeated it so many times himself in the past—and had had it repeated around him, filling his ears like the hush of the invisible waves that seemed to rock the person who murmured it, their knuckles white on their clasped hands.

And Mitani could not deny that it was a passage that had sprung unwittingly to the fore of his mind several times in the last month. It gave him some strange comfort knowing that he was not alone in his shame, and that it had been common even in the distant past, nearly two thousand years ago. But who else could have known what that passage meant to Mitani? How could someone have read his mind, known just what book and what chapter tortured him so? His thoughts went to Izuru, although he was hard pressed to believe the boy could have confessed what went on between the two of them to anyone, let alone another teacher or the priest.

He looked up, and saw Father Robert watching those gathered in the pews from his chair like a hawk scanning the ground for prey. For a brief moment, his gaze snapped straight to Mitani, and the young teacher felt a panic rising in his chest. Did the priest know? Had he chosen that reading in particular as his way of confronting Mitani? It was an unusual choice of reading for weekday mass, even if this was the Lenten season. . . .

“You don’t look well, Professor.”

Father Robert had approached him with those words just a short time ago, when Mitani had come to pray for forgiveness. There was a chilly undertone to the priest’s manner Mitani did not remember being there before. Perhaps, he thought, the priest had begun to find it bothersome how often he came to the chapel. How long could Mitani stretch out this lie about coming to look at the stained glass windows before he stretched it too thin?

“Don't I?” Mitani had faked ignorance. “I feel fine.”

Perhaps the suspicion in Father Robert's eyes was only his imagination. “You look as though you’ve lost some weight. You look more tired than usual.”

“Really?” Mitani had flashed him a bashful smile. “Well, you know, it is that time of year again! We've been running around like chickens with their heads cut off with all this preparation for the exams, and I’ve got an evaluation coming up after the term is over, so I guess the stress must be catching up with me.”

“Maybe that’s it.” But Father Robert still looked unconvinced. “Are you sure your health has been fine? Because if it hasn’t, you should be upfront about it and ask to take a break, before it gets any worse. Get your physical early to be on the safe side. We all know how hard you’ve worked for these boys.”  
Mitani’s forced smile had dropped then. If the priest only knew. . . .

“Is there something you would like to get off your chest? I haven’t seen you in Confession for a while,” the priest said. And his tone did sound gentle and full of concern. Only Mitani knew how quickly that would prove to be superficial if he were to learn the truth.

“Do you mind? I’d rather not, Father. It’s too personal.”

“It’s your decision to make, but I won’t judge you if you change your mind.” That, Mitani thought, was a lie. As if reading his mind, Robert dropped his voice and leaned closer. “Is it your dreams from before? Are you still having them?”

“No,” Mitani found himself saying. “No, those have gone away.”

He swallowed hard, feeling as though his tongue were retreating back into his throat. His mouth refused to say what had replaced them, while his conscience reassured him he was telling the truth, if only half of it.

“‘For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self,’” the professor went on, “‘but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

“‘Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ The word of the Lord.”

“Thanks be to God,” the students and faculty said together. Caught off guard, Mitani’s response stumbled after theirs. _So then_ , he finished in his head, _with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin._

Yes. That was precisely how it was.

He found his attention fading during the homily. Father Robert inevitably found a way to pull the Pauline reading into the spirit of Lent, saying that it had the same essential theme as Jesus’s forty-day fast in the desert. He urged them to remember Paul’s warning, especially now that the end of the school year was little more than a month away. As the Lord had abstained from material pleasures, so should they. For both spiritual and practical reasons: They had exams at the end of the term and could not afford to be decadent. In his sermon, the two were connected, the spiritual well-being and the academic well-being. Ultimately, they were tied to the physical well-being as well. It was a golden triangle that could not be complete without the putting aside of unnecessary pleasures that only led to distraction.

This was how Father Robert justified the selection from Romans. Coughs shook his body from time to time and made him pause in his speech, symptoms of a flu that had been going around and by which he had been hit particularly hard. But the flu did nothing to round the edges of a homily intended to shame the boys into piety.

To Mitani, they were sharp as ever. When the others stood to receive the Eucharist, he remained seated, feeling himself unworthy of receiving it, and not just because he had been skipping Confession.

Unnoticed by any of the other professors, Izuru passed by him on his way to the exit. When he saw that Mitani was abstaining from Communion as well, as though they were sharing a secret, he smiled when he met his professor’s eyes, guaranteeing they would follow his back out the chapel doors into the bright sunlight.

* * *

Izuru kissed him that evening as though making up for what he had missed in mass—hungrily, drinking in each of Mitani's sighs like they were a thing he needed for living, for salvation. Mitani arched his back against the sofa's cushions, constrained by the back of the davenport and by Izuru’s weight on top of him, which gave him no choice but to lose himself in the sensation, to be driven by Izuru’s pure need and the gentle rolling of his hips.

And making him that much more a slave to his flesh.

Once that thought entered his consciousness, it only acted as a catalyst. Mitani's thoughts returned to Father Robert’s warning that morning, and the priest's words would not let go once they sank their teeth into him.

Against his body's will, which wanted very much to follow this pleasure to its natural end, Mitani went still.

Izuru pulled back. “Something wrong?”

“It’s nothing. Forget it.”

At the boy's skeptical look, Mitani encouraged him, “Don’t stop,” and Izuru closed his eyes and leaned forward again. For a moment, under Izuru's heavy breathing and the soft lips that teased his ear, Mitani believed he could just slip back into that warm escape Izuru offered in his body. But it didn’t work out that way.

Mitani turned his head, swearing softly. This time, when he stopped, so did Izuru.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now.”

“I guess it happens.” Izuru moved to get up. “Maybe later, then—”

He started when Mitani grabbed his wrist. The hair had fallen out of his professor's eyes, but he could not quite meet Izuru's as he said, “Actually I . . . I need to ask you something. Did you . . . tell anyone about this?”

Izuru’s first reaction was to be outraged that Mitani would accuse him of breaking his trust. But then he smiled. It seemed he could not prevent his teacher from hearing the rumors after all. “No,” he said. “Because what you said was right, about what would happen if anyone found out, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

He should have left it at that, but he went on: “You should just ignore what the other guys are saying. Wherever those rumors got started, they don’t know anything, and most of them think the whole thing is just a joke.”

“What rumors?”

Izuru’s smile fell. “You haven’t heard them.”

“I was talking about Father Robert. I wondered if you had confessed to him.”

“Of course not.”

Mitani pushed himself up. “What are these rumors saying—”

“I told you not to think about it. And for that matter, Sensei, you’ve been spending a lot of time in the chapel—”

“Asking God's forgiveness for what we’ve been doing!”

“Have _you_ confessed?”

Mitani sobered then. “No,” he said. “I thought about confessing, but in the end I could never bring myself to actually do it. I only asked,” he added in a louder voice as Izuru rose from the couch, “because of that reading today. Didn’t it strike you as a little too appropriate? Like it was meant for us in particular.”

Shrugging on his shirt, Izuru was silent in thought.

“What if he knows about us?” Mitani insisted, sitting up. “I feel like I have it written across my forehead or something, what we've done, this guilt just keeps piling and piling up. At least if one of us had confessed, he would be bound by his oath to secrecy, but—”

“He doesn’t have any proof.”

“That’s not the point.”

Mitani lay back down, and when he spoke again it might as well have been to himself. “Those words just keep coming back to me: The flesh sins, and there is nothing good in it, and it does what I do not want to do. But I am doing what I want to do, and at the same time not. And that doesn’t make any sense.”

He groaned, draping his arm over his eyes.

“Ever since I was a child, they told me it was against the natural order of things for men to lie with one another, that it disgusted God who made everything so that it might create new life. And I believed that. It was easy to believe that for so long, without question. Now . . . Now all I can feel in my heart is how natural this feels, and it tortures me. Could it be I no longer know what it is to sin? How else can it be that I keep wanting to commit this act, night after night, when I know how wrong it is? What have I become that I can’t help myself—that just thinking about doing those things . . .”

Just thinking about those wonderful things and his body reacted with longing for Izuru like he could not bear.

From behind the sofa, Izuru stared blankly down at his professor, whose face was hidden behind his arm. He did not begrudge Mitani his remorse, but nor could he pity him for it either. Izuru simply wearied of this guilt, wearied of it so much it made him sick, and now, something whispered in his brain, now was the time to do something about it. He went to the kitchenette.

Hearing the stove knob click, Mitani must have guessed he was merely putting the kettle on. He did not look up. Izuru opened the drawer looking for a spoon, when his eyes fell unexpectedly on the metal tongs inside instead. He pulled them out without really being sure why. Turning them over before the burner's flame, watching as if in a trance how the light reflected off the cold steel, he said after a time, “Are you blaming me, Sensei, or asking me for forgiveness?”

“I'm not blaming you for my own weaknesses,” came the muffled reply.

“Then are you asking me for benediction?”

Mitani lowered his arm and laughed lightly. “What?” Since when did Izuru talk like that?

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, it’s just . . .” Mitani let out a sigh. “Well, I wonder. Could I even do that? Not that I would be asking the wrong person, but . . . I wonder if anything, any amount of penance, could ever absolve me of what I’ve done already.”

“You're right,” Izuru said. “I can’t do that. But if I received the punishment for our actions in my own flesh, and mine alone, would that make you happy? If I were to flog myself for you, for example, would that be enough to make you love me, Sensei—unconditionally? Guiltlessly?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Mitani said. He forced an awkward laugh, but Izuru’s words suddenly made him very uncomfortable, and not just because to him they sounded like hubris and sacrilege. Those were the words of the saints at their trials, of heretics; he didn’t want to hear them from Izuru. “Don't say things like that if there's no way you can mean it.”

“Why can’t I?” Izuru’s soft voice rose with an otherworldly, dreamy conviction. “Ever since I first pushed you, you’ve held back, out of guilt. For whom? Not for me, surely. I don’t want you to feel guilty, Sensei, I never did. I want you to want me with your whole body, like you do when you’re inside me and I can see your mind isn’t on anything else but being there, in that moment, with me. I like that. I want you to keep loving me like that.”

He stared at the tips of the tongs as he held them in the flame of the gas burner, fascinated with the way the fire licked them without changing their color. A sad smile pulled at his lips.

“But maybe that’s too much for me to expect, as long as you continue to blame yourself for what we've done. So blame me. I’m the one who started this. It was my desire that caused you to sin against God. Therefore, let the sins of your flesh be absolved in me, and do with me as you please.”

With those words, he pressed the tongs to his genitals. The metal felt only cold at first, like it had bathed in ice instead of an open flame. Then, all in a rush, it burned. Surprised by it, not knowing just how it would feel, Izuru gasped and grabbed the counter with his free hand, steadying his knees. Never could he remember pain like this before—searing, excruciating pain, yet somehow not half of what he knew he deserved. With a cruel sense of satisfaction, he endured it until the tongs had branded the flesh, then he moved them lower still. The shock had worn off, but the heat seemed to go right through him, straight through to lodge in the center of his back where it burned like a raging fire. . . .

“What are you doing?” Izuru looked up in time to see the horror on Mitani's face before he rushed to Izuru's side and grabbed the tongs from his hands. Burning himself, he threw them into the sink with a curse, and turned off the stove. “What in God’s name’s gotten into you!”

“I thought I just said.” Izuru wrung the tails of his shirt in his pain, but somehow his voice remained steady and he even chuckled. “You told us once how complacent our faith has become, how unappreciative people are of sacrifice these days. But you of all people understand, don’t you, Sensei? The martyrs you admire. . . . Their trials and sacrifices. . . . That’s why I want to do this for you—”

“Don’t say that, Izuru, don’t even say it! No one is on trial here. Put some ice on the burn before it gets any worse.”

With shaking hands, Mitani grabbed a towel that lay on the counter and began to run it under cold water.

While his eyes were turned, Izuru searched through the kitchen knives for one that would suit his purpose and tested its sharpness on the tip of his thumb. It was not enough, what he had done. It was a start, but that small act of atonement alone was not enough to make up for all their trespasses. Eventually, Izuru thought, Mitani would have to see that. Eventually his professor would thank him.

He splayed his hand on the cutting board, putting the knife's tip to the wood and positioning the back end of the blade over the base of his last two fingers. In one swift move so he would not have the time to regret it, he pressed down hard with all his weight. Blood welled up instantly and poured from where the digits had been severed. The flow of it out of his body was all Izuru felt besides the initial sting, and the feeling made him strangely giddy. “Sorry about the mess,” he said.

Turning at those words, Mitani was too shocked by what he saw to do anything but watch as Izuru repeated the mutilation to his other hand, grunting when it did not go as cleanly as the first time. The scene unfolding before him did not feel real. It was like a bad dream, something impossible.

“My God.” He gasped, his eyes refusing to tear themselves away from the severed fingers that rolled to a stop and lay so wrongly on the counter like little carrots—and the blood on the cutting board and on Izuru’s hands, running in rivulets down into his shirt sleeves, over the handle of the knife he still gripped with one mangled hand. “Jesus. . . . Izuru, how could you do this? What made you even think— We need to get you to the nurse.”

“You want the nurse to know about us, now?” Izuru teased. “Sensei, this isn’t like you!”

No, Mitani thought, it's you this isn't like. But could he really say for certain Izuru had never had this potential in him all along?

Mitani did not look up to see the amused look on his face. He grabbed Izuru’s hand, and the knife fell limply from it to the floor. “If we got you to a hospital right away, they could still reattach your fingers. Ahh—” He grimaced when he wrapped the wet towel around Izuru’s hand and, pressing on the wounds, felt the stub of bone underneath. Izuru did not complain. The blood slowly soaked up through the fibers, dyeing them pink, then crimson, and Mitani felt sick to his stomach seeing it. “You’re bleeding all over the place.”

Izuru just laughed. “It doesn’t hurt, Sensei. Really.”

“Don't talk like that. You’re scaring me.”

“I don’t want them reattached. This is a small price to pay for the sins we’ve committed together. Besides, it feels good.”  
Ignoring Mitani’s attempts to help him, Izuru bent down to retrieve the knife.

“Izuru, stop and listen to me,” Mitani pleaded, grabbing onto him desperately, shaking him, hoping anything would make him see sense. “This has gone far enough, all right? Much, much too far. You’ve proven your point, so stop being ridiculous! Don’t you realize what you’re doing to yourself? What will your parents think when they find out about this—when they see you missing your fingers?”

“You think I honestly care? Those people mean nothing to me.”

“What about me, then?” Mitani tried. His voice and his limbs trembled in desperation, but he had to keep trying. “Why do you think this is going to make me love you any more? How could I think of making love to you after this, Izuru—Izuru, I'm afraid for you like this, let me help you!”

He was unable to say anything more because that was when Izuru leaned forward heavily, and it threw Mitani off balance. He fell hard on his backside on the kitchen floor, the breath knocked out of his lungs and Izuru climbing over him. The blade of the knife rang as it scraped across the floor.

“You don’t even mean what you say yourself,” Izuru said. His voice was low, his eyes that followed Mitani’s lips clouded with lust even now, after everything he had done to himself. “You used to say all the time how wrong it felt, but it never stopped you before. You never could conquer who you really are. Even now, you can’t help it, can you?”

His breath was hot against Mitani’s lips, his throat, carrying with it a cloying, sickening sweetness, like fragrant flowers cut and stagnating indoors. “You want me even when I’m like this.” He smiled like an angel and shook his head. “You’re hopeless.”

It was true. Mitani wanted so badly to deny it, but, God, it was true. His erection was returning; he couldn’t hide that from Izuru in his naked state, or that his breathing was hardened as much from excitement as horror. Mitani wasn’t a sadist—at least he would never admit it: It wasn’t because of the blood.

But hadn’t the blood of martyrs always fascinated him? The stories of their tortures? The paintings in museums of foes locked in mortal combat—could he honestly deny that it was the detail given to the wounds that had captured his attention so thoroughly as a child?

No. This was different, Mitani told himself. But the fact was he no longer knew what to believe.

Izuru raised his knee to his chin in order to chop the two outermost toes off of each foot. His face no longer showed any emotion as he did it. It was simply something he had to finish, to even out the balance.

Mitani tried ineffectually to stop him, but Izuru just lowered himself over his professor, making them join roughly without any concern for his own body. “Don’t you think it enhances the experience?” he breathed against Mitani’s mouth while they rocked together.

“Izuru. . . .” Mitani could only whimper his name, wondering even as he said it how this could be that same person. He searched desperately for words of protest, but his throat clamped up and his mind failed him. His fingertips pressed harder into Izuru’s hips with each thrust with the intent to stop him, but he found himself somehow unable to do even that. Though he could not understand it, nor could he willfully tear himself away from Izuru, even while the boy's blood stained the floor around them. Mitani saw it even when he closed his eyes. This wasn’t what he wanted at all.

After a while Izuru stopped and sighed in frustration. “Why isn’t it working right?” he murmured, but the burns he had inflicted on himself wielded more power over his physiology than his lust. He groaned. “I guess this is what I get. Ironic, though. . . .”

“You need medical attention.” Mitani tried to squirm out from under him. “After what you did, it’s going to be a long time before you’ll be back to normal—”

“Please don’t lecture me, Sensei.”

“I’m telling you, Izuru,” Mitani sobbed. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“No. . . . I guess you're right. . . .”

Izuru picked up the knife again, and for a brief moment Mitani wondered if the boy was planning to kill him. Strange, but the thought did not bother him as much as it would have a day ago, or even an hour. After all he had done to cause this, and what little he had done to put an end to it when he knew that would have been the proper course of action, would he have had the right anymore to blame Izuru?

Instead, Izuru pushed up his sleeve, exposing the inside of his own left arm, and opened it down to the wrist with deep, criss-crossing lines and angles. Sweat glistened on his pale forehead, but his eyelashes fluttered in silent pleasure as he gave each cut the attentive care of a calligrapher's stroke.

“What do I have to do to make you understand,” he asked Mitani, “that I would love you no matter what becomes of me? Do I have to write it in my flesh and blood? Would that finally change your mind? Would that be enough? Because I would do it gladly. For you, Sensei, I would do so much more.”

Izuru stared enthralled at the rivers of his own blood as they ran their course, dark crimson against his fair skin. He reached out to stroke Mitani’s hair fondly with what remained of his hand, and cradle the back of his neck.

“You are,” he whispered, “forever my lover.”

Izuru felt like he would cry. But nothing came up, and the pleasure he felt welling up inside him he had no way to express, so the pressure of it just continued to build and build within him. That was why he had to do something to relieve it, he had to open himself up. Otherwise he felt he would burst with his love for Mitani, it hurt so much. If only his professor were not so blinded by his stubborn faith to see how much it hurt, and how wonderful it felt, to love him, to sacrifice this much for his sake. If only Izuru had realized before. He had been so mistaken. It wasn’t that he’d die if Mitani abandoned him. It was the other way around.

I love you _so much_ , he thought with so much of his being he could not be sure if he actually said it or not. I love you so much I could die. . . .

At some point he collapsed. Startled back to reality by his sudden stillness, Mitani shook him, called his name; but unlike that time before on the floor of Izuru's room, which now seemed like ages ago, there was no response.

He rolled the boy onto the floor and checked his pulse, but could not be sure if he felt one or not. Nor could he feel even a single breath stir from Izuru's parted lips. God, Mitani swore, he should have seen this coming. He should have stopped it while he had the chance, instead of sitting there watching his mutilate himself.

“Izuru!” he called, patting the boy’s face, clinging desperately to what little hope he had left, however dim and irrational it was. “Izuru, listen to me! Don’t do this to me!”

But Izuru’s face was already pale—deathly white next to the bloody prints Mitani left on his cheek. The sheen of sweat was still on his temples, beneath his lip, his brows unsettled over his closed eyes as if he had simply fallen asleep, but Mitani knew better.

His blood was everywhere. Dark crimson on the counter and spread across the kitchen floor. Running red over his body and over Mitani’s—running from his forearm, opened from his elbow to the heel of his hand, running from between his legs, and from his mutilated hands and feet. There was so much of it Mitani did not know what to do. Oh, he knew what anyone else would think, if they caught them like this. His fingers twisted in his hair, biting back a cry, a curse, a sob. “Izuru. . . .” You've damned us both.

He sat back on his heels, suddenly feeling trapped in his little apartment. Panic and grief gripped his throat, made his vision swim in tears, his mind reel. Whatever he did now, it wouldn’t save either of them.

* * *

No one but the devil and Mitani knew what happened in the room after that.

In Meifu, a discrepancy was found between the list of those who had died that day and those who reported for judgment. Further investigation raised a red flag: What had looked like a simple suicide suddenly revealed itself to be much more complicated, and was missing a soul to go with it. The epicenter was a small island off the shore of Nagasaki, square within the jurisdiction of the Second Block. The case was immediately transfered to the Summons Division and, exactly as planned, the job of retrieving the soul fell to Tsuzuki Asato.

* * *

Early the next morning a local fisherman arriving for work was startled to find a body floating in the bay. It looked to be a high school student in age, and the currents that flowed into this part of the bay came from the direction of Saint Michel, so it was not long before the police arrived at the island school. At first neither the headmaster nor the priest who had been taken to identify the body even recognized the body as Izuru's, and were not even aware there had been a problem when he failed to show up for class role call.

The body was stripped of any identifying effects, and mangled when the authorities pulled it out of the water—the skin covered with deep cuts and missing large sections of flesh where fish and crabs, attracted by the blood, had eaten away at the open wounds. Much of the left cheek and eyelid was missing. As were the last two fingers and toes on each hand and foot. The ragged wounds had been impeccably cleaned by scavengers, the skin around them an unreal blue-white like porcelain. The medics quickly covered him up as though he still had some dignity to preserve, but in all practicality, no one wanted to look at that ruined face longer than they had to.

The students had lined the wall which looked down onto the beach when the police car pulled up. Their staring faces were the image Father Robert took with him as he climbed into the back seat. If a priest was needed, they could assume someone was either dead or in some other sort of critical trouble, and their morbid curiosities entertained dozens of possibilities as they searched the crowd in order to deduce who was missing by process of elimination.

From among their numbers, Tsukiori fought for a clearer look. There was not much to see. A plainclothes detective said something to the headmaster, who was being calmed by Robert, but it was impossible to read their lips from so far away even if one had the ability, let alone to hear their conversation. Officers wearing white gloves were taking pictures of the surrounding area, and some of the idiot boys made “V” signs with their fingers when the cameras were turned up to the wall.

Tsukiori’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, but the slight, wry upturn of the corner of the lips held no sympathy for the victim whose identity she already suspected as the mysterious student faded back out through the crowd. The devil had claimed its victim. The ordeal she had dreaded was only just beginning.

The authorities had the remains on a stretcher by the time Robert arrived at the scene. His first glimpse was of a masticated hand poking out from under the sheet that was quickly put back into place by a medical examiner. The priest prided himself on having a strong stomach, however, stronger than that of the headmaster who mingled with the police officers and investigators, looking for information as to what he could tell the parents of his student. Still, he hadn’t expected anything like what he saw. Robert pulled back the sheet, just long enough to recognize half of the face as Okazaki’s. Quickly covering it back up, he made the sign of the cross over the body and muttered a prayer, then crossed himself to ward away some unidentifiable evil.

“That’s Okazaki, all right,” he told the detective as they walked away and the stretcher was loaded into an ambulance. “Okazaki Izuru. His parents live in the city—”

He felt a cough coming on, and whipped out a handkerchief, covering his mouth with it. When he was able to speak again, he muttered, “My God, what happened to him? Could it be he just drowned?”

“Not likely,” said the detective. “There would have been more water retention if that were the case. The body is so banged up, it will be difficult to tell even with an autopsy, but my guess is he was killed by the shock of hitting the water from a fall, possibly even before that. I noticed the high walls around the school he attended.”

Father Robert stopped. “Do you think he jumped, Detective?”

“Why do you say that?”

“It seemed you were implying something to that effect.”

“Well,” said the detective, “it is also possible he was pushed.”

Robert nodded. “Yes, I suppose. Though I don't like what that idea means for our school. Either way, will you please inform me as soon as you know the cause of death? Obviously, if it was murder we will all pray the perpetrator be swiftly brought to justice. But surely you must understand how vital it is I be able to rule out suicide or not. Suicide is a mortal sin, Detective. He wouldn’t be able to be buried on church grounds if that turns out to have been the case.”

“Sure, I understand,” the detective nodded. Then he seemed to hesitate. “In that case, Father, there’s something else you should probably know. But I tell you this as a kind of confession, all right? If this information leaked out it could jeopardize the investigation.”

“You have my word.”

The detective leaned close, dropping his voice to a whisper. “When the ME examined the body he found evidence of anal penetration.”

Beside him, the priest covered his mouth. “You mean . . . Okazaki was involved in homosexual relations.”

“We don’t know that it was voluntary, but so far it doesn't look that way. There was a message burned into his back that seems to coincide with it. ‘Forever my lover.’ There were burn marks on the victim’s genitals, as well.” He noticed the priest’s unease then, and said, “I’m sorry, Father. I should have warned you it would be difficult. But if you’ll bear with me, what’s more . . . It’s strange, but the ring finger and little finger were removed from each hand. The same goes for the toes. There were dozens of wounds all over the body, but those are the only ones we can say for certain at this moment were intentional, probably even calculated. Did he or anyone else ever show any interest in the occult that you would be aware of?”

“I wouldn’t know about anything like that,” Father Robert said with some difficulty.

“Did you know the victim?”

“Yes, not intimately, but he was the student council president.”

“President? He doesn’t look like a senior.”

“No,” Robert said, “he wasn’t.” He told the investigator of the business with the duels as succinctly as he could. “What's more, Okazaki claimed he wanted to turn the student body around, to better emulate the ideals of Christ.”

There was a hesitation in his voice that prompted the other to ask, “But you don’t believe he meant it.”

The priest shook his head. “Well, Okazaki and Fujisawa—that’s the vice-president,” he said while the man took down the name, “they might have everyone else fooled, getting top grades and acting pious, but they didn’t fool me.”

“They didn’t, huh?”

“Do you believe in the Devil, Detective?” Robert said suddenly.

The officer seemed taken aback. “The Devil? Surely you’re not suggesting—”

“No, no,” Robert said with a sigh. “But I do believe that evil exists, and its influence is far-reaching. I hardly know how to explain it myself, but all I can tell you is that that boy, Okazaki, had the look of the Devil about him.” He left the detective to contemplate what he could mean by that ambiguous, grave accusation, saying as he started to go, “Talk to Fujisawa and you’ll see what I mean.”

* * *

The other boys seemed to have much to say about the student council president and vice-president, but it was all rather one-sided. With exalting words, they painted glowing pictures of their student council officers, making them sound as though they were the saviors of the first- and second-year classes, young men who could do no wrong. The detective must have noticed the traces of fear underlying that, but he was blind to how deep it went. It was a fear of what might happen to them if they told what secrets they knew—if only on hearsay, of course—or if they implicated themselves in front of the administration. In hesitant tones and nervous glances, they told the police a different story, a more sanitized story, than the one they had heard whispered in the hallways; there were secrets here more sacred than school records. Washroom deals, cafeteria rumors, that had it on good authority the rivalry between their student leaders was more than just about seats on the council. That they were after something that went with the seat of president, Okazaki’s position—that what they were really fighting over was a man.

“Okazaki?” said Fujisawa. “Yeah, I guess you could say I knew him pretty well.”

He was polite young man, the epitome of charm, and so obliging to the investigator that in comparison he made Father Robert’s accusation seem more like the rantings of a zealous nut-job. If any one of the students seemed suspicious in the way the priest described it would be the dorm chief, Tsukiori, who was more eager to find out what the police knew than he was of any help, asking strange questions like whether they had found any anagrams on the body, and if he could see the autopsy results when they came in. A deviant if the detective ever saw one. Which Fujisawa was anything but, cocky though he was.

“We’ve been in the same class our whole time at Saint Michel,” he continued. “We hadn’t met before that. My family’s not from around here. I don’t know if you’d call us friends, but for a time, I knew if I was going to confide in anyone it would be him. And vice versa. We were of like mind, Okazaki and I.” Fujisawa smiled devilishly. Then he shrugged. “Until . . .”

“Until?” the detective echoed.

Fujisawa chuckled. “Well, until he stole the position of student council president from me after I won it fair and square.”

“That must have made you angry.”

Again, Fujisawa shrugged. “Of course, it did. He betrayed me. We couldn’t be friends after that.”

“So you tried to get back at him?”

“Yes,” Fujisawa said, blinking. “But I never took it very far. To me, we were political rivals. _He_ was the one who always had to do things so intense. I know you’re wondering if I killed him, and I’ll admit that I would have been happy if he suddenly dropped dead. But I didn’t do it. I don’t know about his enemies among the third-years—he stabbed enough backs there, too—but personally I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out Okazaki committed suicide.”

“Isn’t that against his religion?” the detective asked as he wrote that down.

He was surprised when Fujisawa snorted. “Sure. I guess that would make sense, the guy attended a Catholic school and all. Still, he had a masochistic streak.” How he knew, the other did not bother to ask. Fujisawa continued anyway without any prompting: “And, you know, there was a lot of pressure on him to get into a good college. It wears down a lot of youth these days, I hear. I wouldn’t know myself.” Another cocky smile.

The detective asked him if there was anything else he might have left out.

“Well . . .” Fujisawa hesitated.

“Yes?”

The boy did have a suspiciously wide grin on his face as he went to say something, but he stopped himself and thought it over instead. He might have mentioned to the detective how close Izuru had been to their teacher Mitani, how they had seemed practically joined at the hip since the end of the winter holiday, and he didn’t mean side-to-side. It would have been the final blow in his rivalry with the deceased, revealing Izuru’s secret obsession, seeing his memory slandered in the local papers.

However, a better idea occurred to him, one that could potentially be compromised by letting that particular piece of information slip. “It’s probably nothing. . . .”

If he said that, it probably was something. Besides, there was a wicked gleam in Fujisawa's eyes when he said it. The detective waited for him to continue.

“An assistant librarian was let go about a month ago,” the boy said; “a young, _female_ assistant librarian. I heard Okazaki admitted to inappropriate behavior with her. Not that that came as a surprise, though. If you knew her.”

* * *

“I still can’t believe it,” Mitani said when it was his turn to be interviewed. “How could something so awful happen at this school, to one of our students?”

Of all the professors, he seemed to be taking the loss the hardest. Perhaps it was his age, the detective mused—he was too young to have experienced that kind of loss already—or that he had only been at Saint Michel for a few months. In that time, he must have gotten to know the boys well enough to form friendships, and hadn’t yet been teaching so long as to be used to class turnover, or feel the apathy some of his older peers did. He exuded an almost tangible exhaustion as he stood outside in the hallway, resting his back against the wall, as though if the wall weren’t there he would have collapsed in on himself long ago.

“Do you know yet how he died? I mean,” he swallowed, “was it painless?”

“Not yet,” said the detective. “But quite a few people I’ve talked to think Okazaki might have committed suicide.”

“Suicide?” Mitani looked surprised. “Who said that?”

The detective said he couldn’t say.

“No.” Mitani shook his head, struggling with something inside. “He wouldn’t do something like that. There’s no reason he would do something like that. Not when he had everything going for him.”

“Sometimes,” the other tried to help, “the people we think have everything in the world are secretly being crushed under the weight of their own existence. The obligations they believe are being put on them, the stress. . . .”

The guilt.

Something swelled within Mitani suddenly at those words, some bodily reaction like an involuntary sob he couldn’t risk showing. He sighed and covered his face for a moment to hide it. “I should have seen this coming,” he hissed. “I could have prevented it. There must have been warning signs I just ignored. His grades were dropping, but I thought that was because of . . . He just _seemed_ happy.”

“These kind of people are usually very good at hiding it. Especially from authority figures. Maybe he didn’t want you to see.”

Mitani looked up. That last part did sound like Izuru, but, “‘These kind’?”

“The mentally disturbed.”

“No,” Mitani said again. “There wasn’t anything wrong with Okazaki.” Even as he said that, though, he couldn’t help the images that returned all too fresh to his mind. The fingers lying on the kitchen counter without a body. The blood soaking through the towel as Mitani tried to press it to his wounds. Izuru’s smile. _It doesn’t hurt. . . ._ How could something like that _not_ hurt?

“Do you think he was pushed?” the detective suggested after Mitani was silent a moment.

“No. I don’t know. I don’t see why anyone here would—”

“Then what else could it be, Professor?”

Mitani was silent in thought.

“When was the last time you saw Okazaki?”

“Around five,” Mitani started slowly. “He came to my apartment after dinner for a few minutes. I was advising him on getting into college. I thought he had a shot at Tokyo University, though he didn’t seem too thrilled about going there.” He smiled fondly. Sadly. “When he left he seemed fine. I don’t know where he went after that.”

“Can anyone verify your story?” the detective asked dryly.

Mitani frowned. “I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone else saw him.”

“Then, are you aware your statement puts you as the last person to see him alive?”

“I don’t know.” Mitani could feel his self-control began to slip away with Izuru's presence. “I don’t know what to think.” Why couldn’t he have just left me alone? Why did he have to choose me? There was no good reason for it. There was no good reason for any of this. “I don’t know what to think!” he hissed, covering his nose and mouth in his hand as he felt that familiar lump rising in his throat. But, once again, no tears would come to the surface. Just the truth, aching to get out. It was because of me, that’s why. It’s my fault. . . .

Jesus. The man was a wreck. There was nothing more he could do for their investigation, not in this state. That was what the detective told himself as he went to put a reassuring hand to the young teacher’s shoulder and said, “Look, let me know if you remember anything else. You should get some rest. Ask for some time off, and don’t beat yourself up over this, okay?”

To his surprise, Mitani flinched from his touch. But after a moment, as though coming back to himself, he nodded slowly and answered in a whisper, “Okay.”

* * *

“I need to talk to you, Professor,” Father Robert said to Mitani, stopping him after mass, where they had prayed for Izuru’s soul and that answers to his death might be found soon. Mitani nodded. Of course he could talk.

“About Okazaki.”

Then it was certain. He knew.

Mitani wasn’t sure how he knew that. So far Father Robert had not said anything about the boy’s death specifically, nor had he accused Mitani of any crime. Couldn’t it be that he was simply worried about the young professor? It wasn’t as though Mitani hid his grief well.

Nonetheless, Mitani felt it with certainty in his heart. It was in the way the priest looked into his eyes when he said he wanted to talk about Izuru. He knew.

Mitani knew he had to do something. He loathed himself for it, but there was no other choice. Complaining of problems sleeping and stomach pains, he went to visit the school nurse to ask him for advice. He had only intended that, but as he was waiting, his eyes fell on a bottle of prescription medication lying on the desk beside him. “Is this the Father’s?” he said.

Oh, yeah, the other answered as though suddenly remembering, it was just delivered. “I don’t know if you heard, but the flu that’s been going around hit him pretty hard. He has to be careful, you know, what with his heart condition. He can't just take any old over-the-counter for it either because of his medication.” Then he retrieved a bottle from the cabinet and excused himself for a few minutes, leaving Mitani alone in the room and the cabinet unlocked.

“Thank you for agreeing to come and see me, Professor,” Father Robert said when Mitani stepped into the rectory. He quickly covered his mouth with a handkerchief as a sudden cough wracked him.

It prompted Mitani to say, “My goodness, Father, you don’t sound well at all. Are you all right?”

The priest nodded as he overcame the last spasms. “It sounds serious, but it’s nothing more than a common flu, I assure you. The wet weather the other week seemed to make it worse, though.”

“If that’s the case, let me make you some tea,” Mitani offered.

Robert agreed that would be good, and they went into the bright kitchen, he taking a seat at the round French country-style breakfast table, Mitani going to put water in the kettle to boil. As he did so, he asked over his shoulder, “You said you wanted to see me about something, Father?”

“Yes. About Okazaki.”

“That’s what you said.” Mitani lowered his eyes and his voice at the name. “His death came as such a shock, I still can’t believe it, and his class is devastated. It’s not a natural thing for them, you know? For someone that young and healthy, someone you're used to seeing every day to just . . . _go_ like that. Do you think, for their sake, his parents would agree to hold a memorial service here, at the school chapel? I’m sure it would mean a lot to the other students, help them cope with their grief at a time like this.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re speaking of yourself?” the priest said with sympathy in his voice.

But Mitani started just the same.

“Anyway,” Robert continued, “if the parents are anything like my experience tells me, this will be one of the few times they will be protective of the child. I would dread asking their permission.”

Mitani smiled nervously. “Izuru would have said the same thing.”

“‘Izuru’?”

At the rising tone of Robert’s voice, Mitani chastised himself for the slip. It was not a lie, however, to say, “He told me to call him that outside of class once. He said Okazaki was too impersonal.”

“But you were his professor.”

“That's what I told him.”

“You spent a lot of time together outside class?”

“Is there anything in the rules that says I can’t?”

Robert was silent for a second as he thought the question over, and finally said, “No. There isn’t. And the headmaster does encourage professors to form healthy relationships with their students, as mentors.”

“He may have had a lot of privileges I didn’t growing up,” Mitani said as he prepared the black tea, if only because the silence otherwise would have been unbearable to him, “but there were things about Okazaki that reminded me of myself. I guess it was like living high school all over again, seeing this place through his eyes. I wanted him to get into a real fine college, a better one than I ever went to. No,” Mitani changed his mind, “I wanted him to be happy. Truly happy. That’s all I wanted. . . .”

He trailed off, and the awkward silence he had been trying to prevent descended anyway. Mitani coughed. “Sugar, Father?”

“Yes, please.” After what felt like another excruciatingly long moment, the priest said rather abruptly, “Mitani. The one you confessed to having sinful thoughts about, it was Okazaki, wasn’t it?”

Mitani started so bad he nearly dropped the cup he was taking down from the cupboard. In an instant, a million questions ran through his head. Did the priest know? Did he only suspect? If he knew, would he tell the police? Or had he already implicated Mitani enough? His gaze fell on the bottle of prescription medication sitting on the counter, reminding him what he had come with the intention to do. . . . Now Mitani wasn’t sure if he could go through with it, though it had all seemed so easy when he was sitting alone in the nurse’s office.

The whine of the kettle stirred him back to the present. Taking it off the stove with shaking hands, he found he could finally answer honestly, “Yes. Yes, they were about him.”

“I thought as much.” Father Robert sighed. “I will admit he did have a rather alluring personality—and knew it and used it to his advantage, too. I suppose, for someone who’s not used to a place like Saint Michel, it might be easy to, ah, _confuse_ that for . . . well, something else. As compensation for what he cannot have.”

Mitani raised his head. The Father refrained from voicing his disappointment outright, but Mitani knew how he must have been condemning him in his head. Like he had before when Mitani tried in good faith to confess. . . .

Robert began to say something more, but another violent cough seized him before he could get very far. It was a strong fit, and made his eyes screw shut and his body shake with the discomfort. While he was distracted, Mitani worked quickly, appearing to hurry for the Father's benefit. From a bottle he had stolen from the nurse's office, he dropped a strong dose of precisely what the priest's medication warned him not to take into the mug, and heaped a spoonful of sugar on top of it. Then he poured hot water over the tea for Father Robert’s cup and his own.

He stirred it all together, and set it on the table before the priest. “Here, Father,” he said gently. “I added a little extra sugar to help it go down easier. Are you all right? Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Robert waved his offer away as he collected himself. “Thank you,” he said in a scratchy voice. “But you’ve done enough.”

Mitani chafed at his choice of words but said nothing.

Father Robert gripped the cup with both hands, and though it was hot, raised it to his lips to take a generous sip. “M-m,” he agreed. “That is soothing. You really are a considerate person, Mitani. That’s why it pains me to put you through this sort of ordeal but . . . No. It is necessary.” He put the cup down. “First, do you have something you wish to confess to me?”

Mitani tried to smile but failed miserably. “Why do you ask?”

“When you said the dreams had gone away, you were hiding something,” Father Robert said, watching his face carefully. “Don’t give me that look, Professor. I’ve been a priest for two-thirds of my life: I know when someone is lying to me, or hiding something. When the police detective mentioned Okazaki had had sexual relations with a man before he died, I had to wonder. Technically, now I’ve broken his confidence by telling you that, but I have a hunch that it doesn’t come as any sort of surprise to you. Does it, Professor Mitani?”

He paused, letting the noose of claustrophobia tighten until he saw Mitani swallow.

“Tell me truthfully. Were you and Okazaki having sexual relations?”

What could he say, when the priest had just admitted to breaking the seal of a police officer’s confession? It seemed meaningless now, but Mitani said, “As Confession, Father?”

The priest did not exactly nod, but his motion as he took a longer drink of his tea seemed to acquiesce.

“In that case,” Mitani tread slowly, fearfully, “I guess we were seeing each other.” Despite himself, he found even now he could not lie to a priest. And anyway, it might not matter for long. . . .

“How often?”

He shrugged. “Every other night, maybe. . . . Whenever we could. We didn’t keep track. But it wasn’t like that—”

“And the night he died?”

“Like I told the detective—”

“The police think that he was raped—”

“What?”

“—and you've just admitted to taking advantage of a student—”

“I didn’t kill him!”

The priest was taken aback by his outburst. But truth be told, not as much as Mitani was to hear that bit of news. He ran a hand through his long hair, his breath coming raggedly as he repeated, “I know what you’re thinking, Father, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t lay I hand on him. I mean I wouldn't . . . You have to understand, I'd never hurt him.”

His eyes full of attempted understanding, Father Robert reached a hand halfway across the table. But the gesture only seemed fake to Mitani. Just a ploy to get him to confess to what he did not do. Even if the old priest suddenly claimed to have been afflicted by the same sort of devil, Mitani would not have believed him.

“You need to go to the police,” he told Mitani calmly. “Turn yourself in. That’s what any good Christian would do.”

“But I didn’t _do_ anything!”

“Then at least tell them everything that you know. Cooperate. If you don’t tell them what went on between you two, it will be the same as obstructing justice. And you do want justice for Okazaki, don’t you?”

“Yes. God, but if I do that, it will be the same as admitting to a crime! They’ll never believe me.”

Unable to even hit his fist on the table like he wanted to, Mitani stood abruptly, and turned his back on the priest. The sky and the sea outside the window were calm and blue, possessing a peace he felt he would never have again. Because of all this. Because he had been too weak to stop himself. To stop Izuru. . . .

“I can’t do that, Father, I just can’t,” he stressed. “I didn’t kill Izuru. I was selfish, yes, and a fool, and I never meant to hurt him, but . . . But if I confess everything, I might as well throw away the rest of my life.”

“You mean lose your job? Your ability to teach?” Robert said to his back. “You should have realized that would happen when you started something with a student!” The pause grew cold. Then: “I cannot lie to the police, Professor. If they ask me what I know about you, I’ll have no choice but to tell them.”

“And break the seal of Confession?” Mitani swallowed hard. “You can’t do that.”

Robert shrugged. “You haven’t confessed anything to me that I didn’t already suspect. Even if I only give them hunches to go on, the truth will come out in the end. But I can’t just sit back and do nothing. Vows or not, there is a moral high ground here, that much I know without any doubt. A student's immortal soul is at stake here, Professor, and if you do not have the good sense to do the right thing, I will.”

Mitani bit his lip, saying nothing.

“Okazaki trusted you,” the priest continued to accuse him, “and you broke that trust. You broke the school’s trust. And now you haven’t even the humanity to do right by him. God forgive me, I should have—” He coughed again, trying to catch his breath and start over. “I should have—”

Whatever the Father had been about to say was lost forever in a coughing fit more violent than any that came before. He covered his mouth with his handkerchief, hacking into it as he hunched over in pain. Then the cough turned into a wheeze. As he gasped and fought for breath, Mitani fought the urge to turn around. Those sounds terrified him, but he could no longer meet the priest in the eye, not after all he had done.

“No. You're absolutely right. I should have done the right thing from the very start, Father,” he said to the window, but there was no answer but the unnatural gasping of the priest behind him. “But, God help me . . . it did feel right.”

The dull thud of a body hitting the floor finally made him turn.

“Shit,” Mitani said to himself. He went to the priest’s side, glancing into the tea cup as he did, and was not surprised to find it empty. He hadn’t expected the reaction to be quite this sudden. For the briefest of moments, Mitani doubted his decision. Was he not ensuring his eternal damnation with what he had done—the cold-blooded murder of a man of the cloth?

But who would know what he had done? There was no one to accuse him. Except Father Robert, but that would no longer be the case soon.  
He knelt down beside the priest, who rolled and clutched at his chest and struggled for even the slightest of breaths. His fingers tugged at Mitani's sleeve and he tried to tell him to call for help, but all he managed were a few unintelligible syllables. It would have done him no good anyway.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Father,” Mitani said as gently as he could. He stared into Robert’s eyes, and felt only a numb sense of remorse when he found a look of abject hatred aimed back at him. “But I can’t allow you to turn me in. Not for something I didn’t do. I don’t want to go to prison.” He pulled himself out of the old man's grip. “And I won’t lose my ability to teach. I won’t.”

The priest was as good as gone. Mitani did not need to check his pulse to see his heart was failing him, and rapidly. He sat down on the carpet and crossed his legs, dropping his hands into his lap with a sigh. Unprovoked, he felt a tear blur his vision and slowly squeeze itself from the corner of one eye. “Father,” he whispered, “you can hear my confession now.”

* * *

The students were surprised to say the least when police arrived at their school for the second time in just a few short days. This time it was Father Robert the medics wheeled away; and though their professors told them he was being rushed to the hospital for a massive heart attack, it was apparent even they didn’t know the whole story, and either way they somehow knew they would not be seeing the old priest again.

The authorities lingered around the rectory, asking Mitani what had happened. The young professor explained the father had been taking medication for a heart problem and had lately been afflicted by a strong cough lingering after a bout of flu. It was during one of those wracking coughing fits that the priest had collapsed. Mitani had stepped out of the room and did not notice at first that anything was amiss, but when he saw the Father on the floor he called in emergency services right away and tried to resuscitate the priest. But it was to no avail.

He related all this calmly to the authorities. If it seemed strange to them that Mitani was the last person to see either of Saint Michel’s recently departed alive, they made no mention of it.

Fujisawa kept it to himself as well as he watched his professor from afar. The fact remained he knew nothing about Mitani's involvement with any certainty other than what he felt in his gut, but that did nothing to deter him. This was his chance, and though some of the satisfaction he had been anticipating would be gone now that Izuru was as well, the thought that Mitani was not as meek as he appeared nonetheless thrilled Fujisawa. If only posthumously, he would take what Izuru had valued above life itself for his very own.

A service was held for Father Robert by the faculty and conducted by a priest who was a temporary replacement until someone to hold the position permanently could be found. There was something eerie about it: two deaths in three days, and they say death always comes in threes. But Saint Michel's students, despite their talk, saw this tragedy as nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. And Mitani, who felt he should have been praying hardest of all, was often seen with a vacant look on his tired face as the rest of the school stood and sang the hymns.

Waiting until the classroom was vacated, Fujisawa smiled from his seat. Who else could even begin to understand how their professor felt but he?

“You seem a million miles away, Sensei,” he called out as he got up, making Mitani jump and shake himself back to the present. “Not that I can say I blame you. It was so sudden, after all, Okazaki’s death, and now Father Robert. . . .”

“Yes. It was,” Mitani agreed. “A person can tell himself that death is just a part of life, and that everything happens for a reason, but believing that is something else entirely. Especially when . . .”

He trailed off, his thought left unfinished, but Fujisawa nodded anyway. “I know. I wonder myself what we’re going to do about the student council. It doesn’t seem right so soon after his death to give his position to someone else, but I can only hope to live up to his legacy.”

Mitani nodded as well, sympathetically in fact, as though completely taken in by Fujisawa’s show of remorse. “I understand how you feel,” he said, “and if there’s anything I can do to help—”

Fujisawa laughed. “Sensei, no offense, but it looks like _I_ should be the one saying that. You've had a rough time of it. Everyone else has been in their own little world, dealing with this tragedy, so they don’t really notice,” he said to Mitani’s questioning look, “but to me it’s quite obvious how hard you’ve taken it. I think it's safe to say you could use a helping hand right now. Let _me_ be the one to give it to you. Let me be the one to help you cope with your grief.”

He approached Mitani’s desk, the faintest of smiles on his lips full of pity one could take solace in, if they ignored the insincerity that hid in the shadows behind it. “Let me be what Izuru was for you, and forget about him,” he said in a lower voice, and put his hand on Mitani’s shoulder.

Mitani shrugged it off. He glanced quickly at the open door, but everyone seemed to have already gone to lunch and the hallway was quiet. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Fujisawa,” he hissed.

“But I do,” Fujisawa said. “Izuru told me.”

The other started. “He told you?”

“Don't worry. I’m not going to tell anyone.” Fujisawa’s tone was intimate, conspiratorial, and the other could only stare at him incredulous. “It would be awful counterintuitive, don’t you think?”

“I think you’d be better off staying far away from me.”

“Sorry.” Fujisawa smiled. “I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think? Because I like you, Sensei.”

At the look he gave Mitani then, the young professor was suddenly beside himself with grief.

It was different from before: It was not grief for Izuru. What he had told himself to console himself all along was a lie. He noticed with the clarity he had not allowed himself before the beauty that Fujisawa possessed. The danger that was in his sharp eyes and supple lips that knew things a boy his age shouldn’t—the lithe form under his uniform backlit by the sunlight. It was a beauty worlds apart from Izuru’s, but as senseless to compare as wisteria and lilac. Mitani had known his flesh would get him in trouble for its desires, but once again he could not help himself. This was no devil’s doing. He simply wasn’t as strong as he had once believed.

He did want Fujisawa like that. He was already drunk beyond hope on the wine of youth.

Outside the tall windows, the sky was blue against the Gothic stone towers of Saint Michel’s halls and chapel. The wind off the water still carried winter’s chill, but the first pale plum blossoms were opening in the courtyard.


End file.
